Browsing and Modifying Databases in Visual Studio
As an ASP.NET developer, you may have the responsibility of creating the database required for a web application. Alternatively, it may already exist, or it may be the responsibility of a dedicated database administrator. If you’re using a full version of SQL Server, you’ll probably use a graphical tool such as SQL Server Management Studio to create and manage your databases.
If you don’t have a suitable tool for managing your database, or you don’t want to leave the comfort of Visual Studio, you can perform many of the same tasks using Visual Studio’s
Server Explorer window.
Here’s how you can get started. First, choose View äServer Explorer from the Visual Studio menu to show the Server Explorer window. Then, using the Data Connections node in the
Server Explorer, you can connect to existing databases or create new ones. Assuming you’ve installed the pubs database (see the readme.txt file for instructions), you can create a connection to it by following these steps:
1. Right-click the Data Connections node, and choose Add Connection. If the Choose
Data Source window appears, select Microsoft SQL Server and then click Continue.
2. If you’re using a full version of SQL Server, enter localhost as your server name. This indicates the database server is the default instance on the local computer. (Replace this with the name of a remote computer if needed.) If you’re using SQL Server Express, you’ll need to use the server name localhost\SQLEXPRESS instead, as shown in
Figure 15-2. The SQLEXPRESS part indicates that you’re connecting to a named instance of SQL Server. By default, this is the way that SQL Server Express configures itself when you first install it.
3. Click Test Connection to verify that this is the location of your database. If you haven’t installed a database product yet, this step will fail. Otherwise, you’ll know that your database server is installed and running.
4. In the Select or Enter a Database Name list, choose the pubs database. (In order for this to work, the pubs database must already be installed. You can install it using the database script that’s included with the sample code, as explained in the following section.)
If you want to see more than one database in Visual Studio, you’ll need to add more than one data connection.