Shervin Shakibi's Blog

I have a couple of .NET 2.0 winfor applications that I use Click once to deploy them, these application use Sql Express to store data locally. I needed to import data using managment studio, but User Instance databases do not appear in Management Studio. After some research I was finally able to do this.

• Run your application that uses the SQL Express or use Server Explorer in Visual Studio to connect to it. this is imporatant because, A User Instances is spawned by the parent instance of SQL Express when an application makes a special connection to the server.  by using User Instance=TRUE  in the connection string.
• In Management studio connect to the parent instance usually (local)\SQLEXPRESS.
• Open a query Window and execute

• SELECT

  owning_principal_name, instance_pipe_name, heart_beat FROM sys.dm_os_child_instances
• User Instances are only accessible through the Shared Memory connection protocol, and are only exposed through a Named Pipe.

• ShervXPS\Shervin Shak

  \\.\pipe\C3DCB378-EDBB-43\tsql\query

  alive

• Copy the Pipe
• in Managment Studio click on Connect and for server name paste the instance pipe name.
• make sure to use windows Authentication.

Here is a great blog post that goes into more detail http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlexpress/archive/2006/11/22/connecting-to-sql-express-user-instances-in-management-studio.aspx

this white paper was also very helpful learning about SQLExpress user instances http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264564.aspx

I have been loading controls dynamically for quite a while, in 1.1, in 2.0 dynamically loading webusercontrols has changed slightly, I remember doing it a while ago but I could not locate the code and could not remember how I did it.

After searching the web I finally found it. So I decided to document it here, in case I need it again.

in .NET1.x we used to load a control and call its method by:

dim ctl as new MyControl

ctl.PopulateFields(ID)

PlaceHolder1.controls.add (ctl)

in .NET2.0