The most infruriating SQL server issue…

Tonight, I’m trying to put together a few demos for my talk on Wed. As I’m working on it, I realized that one of my demos requires SQL Server and Northwind… I’ve faced this one before with SQL 2005, and thought I knew everything I needed to know. You might be scratching your head thinking “what the heck is he talking about.” I’m talking about how SQL 2005/2008 use a couple users that you might not be aware of. You find out about them when you go to attach an older DB like Northwind. What happens is that when you do the attach you get hit with an Access Denied error (which seems to make no sense at all). Eventually I realized that it was a file permission error (at least with SQL 2005). SQL 2008 is still giving me fits.. .I think I might just cheat and use SQL Express’ attachDB feature (but the whole ordeal really sucks and SQL Management Studio really could do a better job of telling you what might be the cause of the problem…

As a result I’m pretty tired from fighting SQL server for the last hour trying to get a demo that should have taken me 10 minutes to get going… I believe the word we often use in this context is “fail.”

BTW, if someone know what I’m missing please pipe in.. I only play a DBA “on stage…” The “A” stands for Administrator which is something I am not!

Print | posted on Saturday, March 07, 2009 12:00 AM

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# re: The most infruriating SQL server issue…

left by Scott Isaacs at 3/7/2009 12:49 AM Gravatar
Instead of attaching, try just installing from scripts. You can download the scripts (+ other stuff) here: http://is.gd/3p1P.

# re: The most infruriating SQL server issue…

left by Jay Kimble at 3/7/2009 7:19 AM Gravatar
You know, I saw the scripts there, and just never tried them...

Currently I'm switching over to the machine I'll be presenting on... hopefully it's a little easier, but will remember that I have the scripts option.

Thanks!

# re: The most infruriating SQL server issue…

left by Buck Woody at 3/9/2009 11:40 AM Gravatar
The scripts work, as mentioned. They have the added benefit of taking care of all the security.

I demo all the time, and I use Backup and Restore - I think that process works better.
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