How to deploy Windows form application in visual studio 2012 with mdf database

The AttachDbFileName attribute of your connection string should point to your .mdf file. So if you place your mdf file in the: INSTALLATION_PATH\DB\PokerPlayers.mdf, you can determine the installation path at runtime using Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location, than append the /DB/PokerPlayers.mdf to the retrieved value and used that to access the database.

Uros

You will need to specify the path of the database file when connecting to DBMS - when you will need to execute an operation on the database - something like:

public void ExecuteDbOperation()
{
   var appDir = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location);
   var dbDir = System.IO.Path.Combine(appDir, "DB");
   var dbFilePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(dbDir, "PokerPlayers.mdf");
   var connectionString = string.Format(@"Server=SERVER_NAME\INSTANCE; AttachDbFilename={0};Database=Players; Trusted_Connection=True;", filePath);
   using(var conn = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
   {
      //Construct and execute a SqlCommand
   }
}

Hope that helps,
Uroš

Try the following:

Set your connection string to a standard one:
Server=COMPUTER_NAME\INSTANCE_NAME; Database=DATABASE; Trusted_Connection=True;

and replace the placeholders above with:

COMPUTER_NAME - The name of the computer running the SQL server or SQL server express.
INSTANCE_NAME - The name of the sql server instance. You can leave this blank if your are running unnamed sql server instance
DATABASE - The name of the database on the instance to which you are trying to connect to.

1. Make sure that your SQL server is installed on the machine which you are using for development(Server=.\SQLEXPRESS) specifies an sql server instance SQLEXPRESS on a localhost)

2. Make sure the name of your sql server instance actually is SQLEXPRESS and that it's service is up and running. You can check that using the SQL server configuration manager.

3. If you are not accessing a local SQL server make sure it's TCP/IP protocol is enabled. This can be done using the SQL server configuration manager tool.

When your code can successfully establish a connection to the server, modify the connection string to attach the required database as discused in a previous solution.