Windows azure and _ not _ sqlexpress

I 've been very excited recently by the release of Windows Azure, and rest of the Microsoft Suite of cloud based services. I downloaded all of the SDK's, signed up for all the invitation tokens I cocould, and began writing code. the Visual Studio templates for Windows azure projects makes getting your first azure project up and running super simple. I did run into one issues with the project templates setting up my first project.

Basically, the developmentstorage.exe. config for Windows azure expects you to have sqlexpress installed on your machine. I know it probably says it in quite a few places in the documentation, but instructions and documentation are for after the first faliure ;). I don't have sqlexpress installed on my machine. I run sql2008 Dev... now, it wocould not be very tough to go out and download sqlexpress, but I don't want to (a bit of laziness is good for all developers, without it your code wowould never be dry ). so, I just went into the developmentstorage.exe. config, and editted the refs for sqlexpress, and just replaced it with localhost (I have an unnamed instance), and all was well in the world of azure dB objects. you shoshould be able to find your developmentstorage.exe. config at c: \ Program Files \ Windows azure SDK \ V1.0 \ bin.

I hope you have clear Blue skys ahead of you!

Update: I noticed that my development storage was not starting the table service for me. I reflected out the developmentstorage.exe and found that I was not supplying a proper dbname in the configuration file. I doctored up my developmentstorage.exe. config configuration file to look like this:

 

<Service name = "table" url = "http: // 127.0.0.1: 10002/" dbserver = "localhost" dbname = "developmentstoragedb"/>

 

 

Original article:

Http://azurecoding.net/blogs/icbtw/archive/2008/11/02/windows-azure-and-not-sqlexpress.aspx