SQL Server 2008 R2 : Client Installation

Installation Requirements

All SQL Server 2008 installations (including client-tools-only or SNAC-only installations) require Windows Installer 4.5, which is freely downloadable from Microsoft. It can also be installed as part of the SQL Server Installation Wizard or manually installed from the SQL Server media. The location of the installer media varies depending on the media you are using but an example of the location is as follows:

D:\English\SQL2008\Enterprise\X86\redist\Windows Installer\x86

The same operating system requirements for server installations apply to client tools and SNAC installations, with one exception: When you install SNAC by itself on top of Windows XP, only SP1 is required, and when you install SNAC on top of Windows Server 2003, SP1 is not required.

Note that SNAC and the client tools both depend on the presence of the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, and the client tools in turn depend on SNAC. Setup automatically installs both Framework 3.5 SP1 and SNAC, when required, on the target machine. If incompatible or beta versions exist that must be uninstalled first, Setup lets you know to use Installer 4.5.

Installing the Client Tools

To install the SQL Server 2008 client tools, you start Setup normally . When the Feature Selection screen appears, you check only the Client Tools Connectivity check box, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Performing a client-tools-only installation.

The same kind of install can be done quietly from the command line (Setup doubles as a command-line application), using the following:

driveletter:\Servers\Setup> Setup.exe /q /ACTION=Install /FEATURES=CONN
 /INSTANCENAME=INST2008

That’s all there is to it!

You will be happy to learn that the SQL Server 2008 client tools can safely be installed side by side with your SQL Server 2000 or 2005 client tools. You can even access databases and other objects created in either edition (with a few notable exceptions, such as database diagrams) by using either toolset.

The sections that follow describe how to install and use a few of the client tools for client configuration and testing.

Installing SNAC

This section shows how easy it is to install SNAC, the key net-library for SQL Server 2008 and beyond.

As mentioned earlier, both the SQL Server 2008 Database Engine and the client tools depend on SNAC. SNAC is installed when you install the SQL Server connectivity tools, or you can simply launch it on its own from the SQL Server installation medium by running driveletter:\Servers\Setup\sqlncli.msi.

Table 1 describes the files that the Microsoft Installer (MSI) package installs.

The SNAC installer has two primary options (shown in Figure 2):

Figure 2. SNAC’s installation options.

• Install SNAC by itself

• Install the SNAC SDK files along with it

That’s all there is to installing SNAC!

Redistributing SNAC with Custom Client Applications

If you build an application that relies on SNAC, you need to be aware that it can be redistributed in two ways:

• As part of any SQL Server 2008 installation or upgrade

• As a custom application installation dependency

When you are building MSI files for an application, it is important that you register sqlncli.msi as a package dependency (and, of course, to install it as well, if it is not present on the destination machine). This helps ensure that SNAC will not be accidentally uninstalled from the destination machine without first flashing a warning to users, indicating that any application that relies on it will break. To do this, you execute the following command early in your application’s installation process:

msiexec /i sqlncli.msi APPGUID={unique identifier for your product}