The One About SQLEXPRESS, VS 2008, and SQLSysClrTypes.msi
The other day saw a couple new drops for the Azure cloud stack with updated versions of the Azure SDK and the Azure Tools for Visual Studio (both now at the January 2009 CTP version), so I finally set aside some time to install them and poke around a bit. But in my poking around I quickly discovered something that caught me off guard: they require SQLEXPRESS to run.
I suppose this isn’t a huge deal, but I’ve never intentionally installed SQLEXPRESS. Oh sure, there was that one time (um, in college) where I forgot to uncheck the SQLEXPRESS box when installing Visual Studio, but it was promptly removed in favor of full-blown SQL Server. After a little bit of reading and tinkering, I realized that if I wanted to develop against Azure I was going to have to suck it up and install SQLEXPRESS. At this moment I was really hesitant to continue because I was nervous about installing SQLEXPRESS side-by-side with a full SQL Server install, but ScottW was telling me that problems occur if SQLEXPRESS is installed *before* full SQL Server, not after (apparently the named instances can get screwy).
So I popped in my Visual Studio 2008 disc to add SQLEXPRESS and everything seemed fine until at the very end of the installation I was prompted for the location of SQLSysClrTypes.msi. Huh? Isn’t it on the disc? If not, why not?
I left the setup dialog where it was and hit Google for answers. I quickly found the SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack, which provides download links for a number of things, including SQLSysClrTypes.msi. I grabbed it and tried to tell setup where it was, but for whatever reason, setup didn’t want anything to do with it. So on a whim I installed it manually while leaving the setup dialog where it was. After it installed, I canceled the setup and was informed that everything *but* the SQL Server System CLR Types was installed (including SQLEXPRESS), which of course wasn’t true because I just did it.
Having been burned by bad Visual Studio installations before, I half expected Visual Studio to fail but was pleasantly surprised to find that not only did it seem to work properly, my sample Azure app worked now as well. So as far as playing around with the Azure SDK and Tools, I’m good to go.
But I’ve got one more thing. I did some more digging and discovered that the SQLSysClrTypes.msi file is in fact found on a disc, just not the Visual Studio 2008 disc – it’s on the Visual Studio 2008 *SP1* disc. So how do you like that? I had the damn thing the whole time but never knew it, and if I would’ve popped in the SP1 disc I wouldn’t have been as nervous about how the SQLEXPRESS installation turned out.
Oh well, now I know and no harm seems to have come from it. Hopefully this will help someone else in that situation.
