Portforward SQL Server?

Question

Hello

I haven't done SQL in a while, so I need to freshen up on things. I have a SQL Database running on my computer, and my server is localhost. I made an app in VB.Net that connects to this database. Everything works fine and all, until I distrubute my app to another person. When they try to connnect it doesn't seem to work for them. Do you know whats happening, I copy the whole release folder to them, and they can't connect? Also does anyone know why my icon is not appearing for my application as well, when I give it to another person?

Sincerely,

Kevin

Answer 1

It looks like you are distributing the code with a connection to a MySQL server in localhost, but the other users do not have a SQL server installed. So, depending on what you actually want to do, you have alternatives:

• You want to distribute your app with a database, where each user will have his own data (their own 'SQL server'): In this case I recommend you to use SQLite. That way, they don't have to install any database server because SQLite is a file-based DB server, all the funcionality is in the library, no install needed. http://sqlite.phxsoftware.com/ is a .NET binding that works very well.

• You want for other people to connect to your database: Then you have to configure connectivity from your users to your database and have a means to configure the connection string, because you probably have "localhost" hard coded there now. Opening the DB server to the world is not a very wise thing to do in general, YMMV. A good alternative is to offer a web services / REST interface for clients to access the data instead of opening direct connections to the DB server.