I am working on an application in my free time and I want to use a SQL Server database. I have the .iso for SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer but I don't have an extra computer to dedicate as a server. I assumed I could use VMware Player for a virtual server but from what I've read it seems that I would need VMware vCenter or another paid version.
Is there a free option for creating a SQL Server database virtually? This will be extremely small scale (3 tables and just for my personal use) so I am not worried about performance at all.
You can install that locally on your computer. There is no need for a virtual engine. Even if some of the MS documents say you need a server operating system, that is not the case. The setup has a check for valid operating system, and it just installs fine on Windows XP, Vista, 7 in my experience.
But if you want, VMWare Player would also work. In contrast to its name, you can also create virtual engines with it - but with some limitations.
And for a really small solution, even SQL Server Express, which is also free, would do. If I remeber correctly, the main restriction is that the data may not exceed 1 TB.
SQL Server can run locally without any problems, even in your dev/gaming/browsing computer without creating too much interference. There is no problem in installing it for testing and even for production of small systems (the express edition is free and valid for those uses).
Another, even slimmer, alternative, if you dare to upgrade to SQL 2012, would be to use a new feature called LocalDB. It's basically the very same db engine with a very important difference: it does NOT run as a service, but instead it's a regular program that is automatically started when a connection is attempted. Advantages would be that it does not consume resources until it's needed and yet you've got almost the full feature set of the real server. Here is an introduction on it. While I've never used it (always with the full express version), it seems good for the kind of programs you want to develop.
Related
Ok, I know what is basically a Hyper-V is.
Simple, a virtual machine. Well, good for testing application and development usage.
Ok, so far so good for the understanding. and here the main question:
Why do you need to install servers in a Hyper-V on a real server?
Isn't that running a server os on the real machine is somehow better performance than running it in a virtual environment?
for example, database server. Install it in a virtual machine? why not on the real machine?
One example of its use would be to create the perfect developer environment if you want to run many different versions of SQL Server on the same physical box.
SQL Server 2005 isn't compatible with Windows 10 so a virtual server running Windows 2003 is better to house it. Windows 2008 for SQL Server 2008 and so on.
This also gives you the flexibility to allocate resources to different VMs and prioritise RAM to the instance that your currently developing against. Giving you server level options with client tools running on the host OS as intended.
Check out this blog post on setting up such a dev environment.
http://www.purplefrogsystems.com/paul/2016/05/using-hyper-v-and-powershell-to-create-the-perfect-developer-workstation/
consider I write a desktop software in C# for example,and it reads/writes data to/from sql server,Can I run this software on a system without having sql server installed.
I saw the two links of stackoverflow,but did not get my answer.
I want to know CAN THAT BE DONE OR NOT?
if yes,how?
thanks in advance.
Sql Server must be installed, and running, somewhere to be able to use it. However, this does not need to be on local machine. The most common scenario for Sql Server is to be installed on a dedicated server machine off in a data center somewhere, and either many clients will connect to and use the same database, or one or a few web servers will connect potentially many times per second with different requests. It's not really intended for desktop use.
If you want to build a desktop app, and you want a database to use only as a local data store, Sql Server is actually a really poor choice for this. That includes the free Sql Server Express. Don't use it for applications that will be distributed to end users, where all the data will kept on each user's local system. It is a server-class engine, and works best when it can run on dedicated hardware.
Instead, you want a desktop-class or in-process database engine, such as Sqlite, Sql Server Compact (not Express) Edition, or even MS Access.
There are many SQL engines that can be embedded in desktop application. For example SQLite, there should be one with C# interoperability.
I am looking to create a database server that can be used to store data using a VB.net application. When I initially installed SQL Server 2005 Express edition, I believe I installed this using the LocalDB option.
As it stands my application is a simple tool which utilises the Process.Start command under certain situations, depending on user input, to launch Game Servers for use at a gaming LAN I assist in running.
I wish to progress the application by being able to update, delete and query a database created in SQL Server 2005 Express. I understand the use of connection strings etc, however I am wondering if the installation using LocalDB will mean that I cannot connect to the server to process the data I require.
Can I continue to use the LocalDB option and create a Database Server for specific use using my application or is a different installation option required?
Secondly, can someone point me in the right direction of how to create a new Server for this purpose? All of my searches so far have provided results for creating a database only, and not the server.
I have a couple questions about what you are trying to do.
First, why are you installing SQL Server 2005? It was released almost a decade ago.
I would go with 2012 express edition.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29062
Second, install the management tools. SSMS is a nice GUI to do work in.
Third, If you are spinning up anything other than express, there are licensing costs which are quite high. 9K for standard and 25K for enterprise per socket or such.
Here are the versions and features list from microsoft.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144275.aspx
Last but not least, having the express edition on another computer is fine. However, you will have to use a network protocol such as TCP/IP instead of shared memory.
It will take longer to send Tabular Data Stream (TDS) to the other computer versus talking to memory on the same computer.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/c4f06669-41fd-42e6-b4a9-564cf04ca9f7/how-to-choose-between-shared-memory-named-pipes-tcpip-via?forum=sqlgetstarted
Good luck with your project.
You can use a local instance of SQL Server just fine, if you want to set up a separate server for some reason then you'll need either a 2nd machine on which to install SQL Server, or to spin up a virtual machine. If running Windows 8 (and barring hardware limitations) you have Hyper-V at your fingertips.
This is not a complete answer for you but may give you some things to think about.
First you might want to think about your choice of database. If you don't have a compelling reason for using 2005 you will probably at least want to move to SQL Express 2008.
Second, to answer the part about creating a server... A server is something that serves data. In a general sense a computer configured to be contacted by external machines and respond with data is a server. A web server runs a program like IIS or Apache to respond with web pages. A database server contains a database and allows connections to that database. So as long as you install the database on a computer and configure it to allow external connections, you have your database server.
In MS SQL there are several things that need to be set up to allow a database to accept external connections. One is that the SQL Server Browser service will need to be active. Another is that the database itself will need to be configured to allow external connections (SQL Authentication type probably).
Hope this helps.
Addition:
SQL Remote Connection Configuration
Disclaimer, I don't have SQL Express 2005 installed but I think the settings are found in the same place in 2008. If the info here is not exact to SQL Express 2005, the general terminology used here should be enough to get you headed in the right direction to find the specifics.
While viewing the database in Server Management Studio or Enterprise Manager, right click the database server instance name (the root of the tree) and select properties. There should be a section title Connections and within this section there should be an option "Allow remote connections to this server". Make sure it is checked. The other setting you need in this properties menu is under the security area. There is a radio button for "Windows Authentication Mode" and "SQL Server and Windows Authentication Mode", you want the second that allows both.
The next step you have may be to create a new user, add a password, and connect the user to the database. That will give you the credentials you will use in your database connection string while programming. I usually add new users through the security section of the database then set the User Roles for each database that I need to connect to. It is good practice to limit the permissions to those needed by the application. Typically this is read and write, but sometimes you can get away with just read. The less the better.
I'm currently working a contract for a company which will be moving an access database to MS SQL server in the future, and I'd like to hone my skills before the company makes the switch.
I'm also looking forward to possibly developing a rudimentary website which would have a simple HTML/CSS/JS front end, and those skills could also use a sharpening. I'd like to develop my skills through some SQL work locally on my home computer. Researching how to do that has only yielded the suggestion of installing an Apache web server with PHP and MySQL on my local machine. While I'm not opposed to doing that, the last time I worked with an Apache install, it was over-complicated and bloated.
Is there a more streamlined option? It doesn't seem necessary to load an entire web server for the specific use I'm going for.
I'd prefer to simply install a program that allows me to host the [My]SQL database locally, and perhaps later some way to test HTML and Javascript interacting with the database. I'm already somewhat familiar with Sequel Pro. As an added bonus, my Python skills are rusty and I'd like to get used to scripting Python. At this point Xcode (4.2) seems the likely solution here, but I'm open to other options.
I would be installing on a 11" MacBook Air running Lion and Xcode 4.2.
Apache and PHP ship with Mac OS X 10.7. MySQL installation is pretty straightforward with the package available from MySQL.
Take a look at these instructions--for your purposes, you can stop after the php.ini section.
Obviously a very subjective question.
I find CherryPy (with Python) for the web server and server programming, combined with jQuery to augment the HTML in the browser to be a powerful and lightweight combination. When possible, I use SQLite for the database — another extremely lightweight option. I share your distaste for Apache, at least when it's not needed.
If you want to develop solid skills that are peculiar to MS SQL Server, you really don't have much alternative to installing SQL Server someplace you can access it. Although you can certainly limit your use of SQL Server to standard SQL set-based commands SQL Server is more often used with a heavy emphasis on procedural code built into stored procedures. Those skills (writing SQL Server specific stored procedures) are only very minimally transferable to or from other database products.
If you were running Windows, you could get MS SQL Server Express for free:
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/editions/express.aspx
In the end I just installed MySQL. I ended up following the instructions available from this blog post about setting up django, but not installing phpMyAdmin...
This post also has some good things about setting up passwords and such, since I really didn't want to be stuck relying on something else to admin the MySQL setup.
Currently running Server 2003 but am looking at reinstalling in the near future due to a change of direction with the domains. Should I take this opportunity to install Windows Server 2008 instead?
I would love to play with new technology and the server is only for a small home business so downtime/performance issues aren't really a concern.
I am no expert on Windows server revisions, but the only new feature of Server 2008 I can think of is Hyper-V. But I would try Server 2008 just for Hyper-V, as this VM hypervisor is supposedly much faster than VMware and Virtual PC, and is compatible with Virtual PC virtual disks.
One rule that has served me very well over the years is: Do not upgrade infrastructure components just for the sake of upgrading. If it works well, leave it be. You mentioned that some downtime isn't a big deal, but if the server is actually used then there is a chance it can become a big deal unexpectedly. Why not simply get (or build) a new machine and play with the new operating system there? That way you get the best of both worlds.
There is no Exchange Server 2008. Exchange has always been tightly integrated with IIS which tends to bind it to a specific version of Windows. However, Exchange Server 2007 SP1 can be installed on Windows Server 2008.
Exchange Server 2003, however, cannot run on Windows Server 2008 and I do not believe there are any plans to do so in a future service pack.
Note that Exchange Server 2007 requires x64 architecture, running the 64-bit OS, on a production system. The days of booting /3GB are past - it simply does not provide enough virtual address space for current large databases. Exchange's long-running virtual memory fragmentation problem has not been fixed, it has just been given more virtual address space to work in.