This page was created for this note: You can use a locally
running instance of SQL Server Management Studio
Express to connect to your remote database. Prior to this
discovery I was using a web-based application, ASP.NET Enterprise
Manager, which, as far as I could tell, doesn't work well.
When MS-SQLSMSE loads, enter your remote database server where
one typically uses ./SQLEXPRESS or the computer name. Log in with
remote credentials, and you're good to go. Lightning fast database
administration.
The drawback is you have to have a copy of MS-SQLSMSE to run. If
you don't--you're at another person's computer, say-- you can go
back to your web based admin. Incidentally, when I log into my
remote database server, I can see the names of all the databses on
there. I can only view my own, but the names of the others are
visible. I wonder if a query could count them...or if not enough
cred.
Anyway, whenever possible, use SQL Server Management Studio
Express to administrate the database. Seriously, the web-based
admin sucks. This is a web-hosting issue, not an umbraco issue--my
hosting provider provides a cheap admin that works very slowly.
Realizing I could use Management Studio Express just makes me want
to make databases for the pure joy of it.
Months Later: I recently upgraded an existing
site to umbraco 4.0.0, and I was still getting the old blue icons
in the 'Sections' area of the interface. So I deleted those files
from their directory, leaving the new single png image. But then
the buttons all looked like broken images (from the old way), along
with the top left of the sprites png (one assumes in css). Turns
out I needed to update my DB, although I tried doing that via the
installation wizard. The update to the DB required I make a query,
soI got to use SQSSMSE. If your icons are acting up, and your on an
installation of umbraco that was upgraded from an older version,
you may need to run this:
update umbracoApp set appIcon = '.tray' + appAlias
If you experience database related errors after an update,
always check that the appropriate changes were successfully
made.
MONTHS LATER: It's July 2009. I've spent the past weeks trying
to create the pefect umbraco starter-site, to populate all my
domains with. I guess I've been doing that since I discovered
umbraco years ago, but lately I was working with vistaDB. VistaDB,
no relation, is, for our purposes, a self-contained dataase
application and databse. As oppsed to working with SQL-SERVER,
where the database is hosted by the same environment hosting the
site, and somewhat inaccessible from a file structure point of
view.
VistaDB looked like the perfect thing for umbraco. Having the
database as a file in a folder next to umbraco.config, which stores
actual site content, meant that putting the site from development
arena to hosting would be greatly simplified.
But, here's the thing. VistaDB seems slow. Too slow. Now, I've
looked into this, and the general opinion is, if VistaDB is slow,
either your machine sucks, or the implementation by your
application sucks. Well, my machine sucks, so I was giving it the
benefit of the doubt. But when I put the site live, I happen to
know that my website host machine does not suck. And when I posted
the site live it was plagued with 101 errors both in the backend
and frontend. A site with only a few dozen nodes.
I've not seen these errors at all with other databases.
Furthermore, when I say slow on my personal machine, I actually
mean kind of locking up. Sometimes the database file *.vdb3 becomes
"in use" by some process, and can't even be copied accuratelt or
put live. I think I cleared this once by closing processes in the
Task Manager until I could zip the site up into a backup. Usually
it means rebooting, not even logging off and on will clear access
to the database file.
An untouchable database may as well be a SQL database.
Not only does it not appear to work, but using VistaDB means you
can't use the Log Viewer package, as they're incompatible. I was
willing to give up log-viewing convenience for FTP convenience, but
if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I got enough things to worry
about with my sites.
Furthermore, ther is a question of licsnsing, in my mind.
Umbraco as an entity appears to have licsensed VistaDB for use with
the application. But if you want to work directly with the databse
file, you still have to install VistaDB yourself on your machine,
along with their management studio analog--and these are couched in
versioning and liscencing.
I may be wrong, and it may change in the future, but for now,
I'm reminding myself:
Don't use VistaDB with umbraco.
NOTE: I've found that I set up a lot of local sites to test
something, then don't want them. �VistaDB �with umbraco is great
for this, as it streamlines setup immensly for these temporary
installations.
