LightSwitch establishing a connection to SQL Server instance

Question

I’m just trying to put together a simple example app. I choose my datasource, a SQL 2008 R2 development database not on my box, pick integrated security, I pick some tables and I add a screen to the HTML Client folder and I get the below error. Do I need a local SQL Express instance installed even though I’m connecting to an external database?

Error 1 An error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server instance '(LocalDB)\v11.0'. A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 52 - Unable to locate a Local Database Runtime installation. Verify that SQL Server Express is properly installed and that the Local Database Runtime feature is enabled.) C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\LightSwitch\v3.0\Microsoft.LightSwitch.targets 152

Answer 1

No, you do not need a local database. The error you are getting could be a number of problems.

You should make sure that the connection is correct to the database, and make sure that the server is properly configured so your system can reach it with correct permissions.

However, if you reached the database to add the tables to your app, and the error reporting a local database is the wrong connection, my guess may be that the publish portion of the project is where the connection string would be generated.

If this is the case I would look at changing the connection string for testing, which is discussed here: how to change the connectionstrings of a lightswitch application in debug mode