Discovering sqlserver installed on the machine

I'm going to deploy an application click once and wondered what the best technique for dealing with the database, since the click once install sqlserver to me I was wondering how I determine 开发者_如何学编程the sqlserver installed so that when the application is first run, see it and create the sqlserver database.

I would not use the windows install to distribute this application because it will have multiple versions of update, and would be easier with clickonce.

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Which flavor of SQLServer are you using? Here's some helpful information.

If it is SQLServer Express, you need to add the database to your project and set the build action to 'content' and set 'copy to output directory' to 'copy if newer'. This will ensure the database is included in the deployment.

Next, go into the prerequisites dialog and select SQLServer Express. When the user runs the setup.exe, it will check and see if it is installed, and if not, will install it.

If you want the newest version of SQLServer Express, you can find how to create a bootstrapper package here -- Microsoft doesn't provide one, but this article provides the XML you need and provides links to the SQLServer Express downloads.

If you are using SQLCE, you need to attach the database (*.sdf) to your project and set the properties as noted above. However, you do not need to publish this as a prerequisite, you can just include the dll's in your project as noted here.

When your publish a new version, if the database has changed, ClickOnce will put the new database in the DataDirectory and put the old one in the \pre subfolder of the DataDirectory, and you have to write code to handle that. This sounds appealing, but I think it's dangerous. If you even so much as open your database to look at the structure, it will change the date/time stamp, and ClickOnce will think it's new and publish it, and you will get calls from your customer about their data missing, unless you handle this.

So I usually recommend you copy the database to LocalApplicationData when the user first installs your application, and handle any updates to the structure programmatically after that. There is an article about how to do that here.