Urban Legend - SqlSvrExpress Works In Production Web Site!!

After days of trying to deploy my web application along with the ASPNETDB database I am convinced this is actually just an attempt on the part of the MSFT developers to drive us nuts.

It simply will not work. As reported by everyone in all of the forums, it works fine in development but does not work when deployed. If I move my data to a full SQL Server instance and modify all of my connection strings accordingly, it works fine, as well. It just does not work when I publish the app and try to run it using the AttachDBFilename methodology. I am convinced that only Santa Claus or an honest lawyer can make it work.

Let's recap the steps: first, I create the folder that I want to use for production and give Modify permissions on that folder to <machine>ASPNET and NETWORK SERVICE. Then I open up IIS Administrator and create a new virtual directory that points to that folder and set its permissions to include Write. I check the ASP.NET tab and it's set for 2.0. Now I switch back to VS2005 and publish my web application directly to the target folder.

Feeling optimistic, I go right to IE and bring up the site. Looks good until I attempt to login. That's when I get the first error - Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to a failure in copying database files. The connection will be closed.

From there I start through the forums and try every one of the solutions proposed, even though none of them specifically identify this error wording. I know I should have used the wording from the Exception "Details" - except they state exactly the same thing - what was I thinking? I thought the .NET developers did away with the error message authors from the old days but it looks like they're back with a vengence.

Somewhere along the way I am able to get past that first error. Unfortunately, I've made so many changes I don't know which combination actually worked. But it doesn't matter because now the database is refusing to let <machine>ASPNET login! Okay, so I use SSME and create a login attach the database and create a user (none of which is supposed to be required for UserInstance=true). Detach the database and try IE again. You guessed it - still won't work. Now it can't generate the user instance because a database by that name already exists, or the user doesn't have permissions, or it's Friday and the machine wants to leave early - I give up.

So, at this point, I'm pretty much finished with SQLExpress for anything other than my development environment.