QUOTE (innosia)

.NET programmer can easily build Setup and Deployment package using existing wizards in VS 2005 or 2008, thus when the setup.exe is run in client, it detects that whether SQL Express is installed or not on the system, and it can install it if requires. The fact is, programmer does not have any options such as

- Changing the database instance name, the default instance name is SQLExpress and cannot be changed (it is restricted)
- Cannot change the SQL user and password
- Thus this makes SQL Express application hard to be configured automatically, and it causes programmer must do some manual configuration.

In this Tutorial, I have a class name BusinessSQLEXPRInstaller, to use it as installer
- First build your windows form application and add app.config entry
<appSettings>
<add key="IsInstall" value="0"/>
<add key="IsRestart" value="1"/>
</appSettings>

Add both isinstall and isrestart key in app.config, and let the value like that as default

in your windows form, there must be a start up form, in this start up form constructor add
JohnKenedy.BusinessSQLEXPRInstaller _ins = new JohnKenedy.BusinessSQLEXPRInstaller("<Installation Display Name>", "localhost", "<New database instance name>", "<new database name>", "<database password>", "<database backup filename>");
if (_ins.IsDone == false) _ins.ShowDialog();
if (_ins.IsRestart == true)
{
Application.Exit();
this.Close();
return;
}

Change <..> to match with your value.

- After your project is ready, create setup and deployment application
- Then Download SQL Express for free at http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/a...e/SQLEXPR32.EXE
- use command line to go to the exe folder and type : SQLEXPR32.EXE /x
- nows all the files contain in exe resources, will be extracted, and add these extracted files into your Setup and Deployment Application Folder\SQLEXPR2005 folder (create this new folder)
- add your database backup filename (for example mydb.bak which is created from SQL Server Enterprise manager or management studio) and put it in this folder too
- Build your setup and deployment project

The resulted setup.exe now includes the SQLExpress that can be installed by your application using BusinessSQLEXPRInstaller class.
This helps you automate several things
- restore your database to the client without user configuring
- install the database engine without user knowing
- as developer you know the database engine username and password and can be controlled by you as developer
- User does not need to know programming languages, they just click and install, and no need to understand how to setup your application to connect with the database.

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