在Visual Studio中添加连接时看不到我的Northwind数据库

Question

As a beginner in C#/VS I want to practice making basic LINQ queries on simple DB's. I downloaded the "famous" Northwind and Pubs databases on the official Microsoft websites ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=23654 ). It gave me a .msi files that installed 6 files on my c: instnwnd.sql, instpubs.sql, NORTHWND.LDF, NORTHWND.MDF, PUBS.MDF, PUBS_LOG.LDF.

When I launch Visual Community 2015 and simply make an "Open => File..." and open the "instnwnd.sql", it opens the .sql file without problem. The problem is when I'm trying to make a connection to the database, being either through the Solution Explorer (Data Connections => Add Connection) or while I'm trying to create an EDM (Database first), which is what I want to do eventually.

The exact problem is that one : the Northwind and Pubs databases doesn't show up in the database list when i'm trying to add a connection, I only get the system databases. Here is what I get :

http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/128870screenshot1.jpg

I read many MSDN documentation pages and several StackOverFlow topic about the matter (the closest of solving my issue was that one, but didn't work : How to connect to LocalDB in Visual Studio Server Explorer? ). I have SQL Server Express 2014 with tools, started SQL services in my Windows Services etc.

What should I do in order to have those databases available so I can generate code and starting making my LINQ exercices ?

Thanks in advance !

Answer 1

You need to attach the databases before you can see them**. You're having a problem attaching the databases due to versioning (which is odd), but your sample db's are very old. Perhaps try newer ones from here https://northwinddatabase.codeplex.com/ and make sure you attach them before expecting them to show up in the tools.

** Technically this is not true. I believe there is a way of connecting to sql server and passing a file path in the connection string, however this will likely still fail for your due to the error you get trying to attach the dbs you have. Additionally, it requires a specially crafted connection string which may or may not be usable with the gui tools you're trying to use. It is also, in my opinion, a less common way of accessing sql server databases, so I would stick with attaching them first. If you want to find out more about this, I believe the feature you need to research is called 'sql server user instances'.