Sunday, March 25, 2012

Can I edit SDF files without full SQL Server license?

I'm trying to open an SDF file. After many searches on the net, it appears that there are two ways to do this:

Open the file in VS 2005 Open the file in SQL Server Management StudioI don't have, and don't plan to purchase, a license to full SQL Server 2005. I do have Visual Studio 2005 Pro. When I open an SDF file in Visual Studio, I get the following (oh so informative) error:

The operation could not be completed. Unspecified error

Since I don't have full SQL server, I downloaded SQL Server Management Studio Express. There's one major problem: the Server type combo box is disabled in the "Connect to Server" dialog. Try as I might, I can find no mention anywhere as to why this is the case. I'm guessing that functionality isn't supported in the Express version of the tool, but as far as I can tell, nobody thinks it might perhaps be reasonable to document why this combo box is disabled. It certainly doesn't show up in the document that shows up when I click the help button on this dialog.

Could somebody at Microsoft please tell me if it is even possible to edit these files without buying a full SQL Server license? I'm trying to use SQL Server Compact Edition to replace legacy code that uses an MDB file (via ADO) for a desktop application. From everything I have read, this is the officially recommended thing to do. But if I now have to buy a full SQL Server lincense to accomplish what used to be a simple double click on an MDB file, then there's something seriously wrong.

It turns out that my problem was the fact that I didn't have Service Pack 2 installed for SQL Server Management Studio Express, although installing that (along with making sure everything else on my system was up-to-date via Microsoft Update) didn't solve the Visual Studio error. I do have SP 1 installed for VS 2005.
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