Installing SQL Server Express 2008 side-by-side with VS2008 and SQL Server Express 2005

Question

Is it possible to install SQL Server Express 2008 when I have VS2008, SQL Server Express 2005 and SSMS 2005 Express installed?

Furthermore, is it possible from VS2008 to assign SQL SE 2005 to one project and for another project assign SQL SE 2008 to be used?

I am working on a project where we use SQL SE 2005, but I am following some tutorials where the database is created with SQL SE 2008, so I can't open them with SQL 2005.

Answer 1

You can install them side-by-side.

When you do, you will need to specify a different instance name for the new version to avoid conflicts.

As far as pointing to the one version from one project, and the other version from another project, you just need to specify the correct instance name.

For example

(localmachine)/SqlExpress2005

and

(localmachine)/SqlExpress2008

Answer 2

The answer to all of these is yes, but you'll need to install SQL SE 2008 to a new named instance (not the default). This means you cannot use the Web Installer on Microsoft's page, and will need to do a custom install from here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlexpress/archive/2009/06/15/installing-sql-server-2008-guidance.aspx