Quote Originally Posted by Xancholy
after the app & SQL Server 2008 is installed - how do I reference the instance of SQLServer ?
It is ALWAYS your connection string that controls what database you connect to. SQL Server Express is always installed with the instance name SQLEXPRESS by default and you should always accept that name unless you have a very good reason for doing otherwise. That means that your connection string will use ".\SQLEXPRESS" as the server name on your development system and it will be the same on any system you deploy to.

The only issue might arise if users already have SQL Server 2005 Express installed with that instance name. In that case they should probably uninstall that before installing your app. If they can't do that for some reason then I don't really know what instance name would be used. You could always test that out to see.

If they do use a different instance name then you will have to have stored the server name somewhere that they can change it. That's why storing the connection string in the config file is a good idea.