Just a suggestion, but it would be nice to have some additional information in the documentation for connecting to an instance of Microsoft SQL Server, such as SQLEXPRESS. On our server here at work, I set it up with the instance parameter:
Related to that, is it possible to run from a LocalDB instance of the same server, and would it be recommended for/against? I have no plans to change, just curious. So far SQLEXPRESS is working for us.
OK apparently the answer to using LocalDB as a standalone database is “no”. I researched it and tried it out for myself. Currently, as far as I know, it’s not possible.
Discussion:
Connecting to SQL Server LocalDB using JDBC - Stack Overflow
Bug report:
jTDS - SQL Server and Sybase JDBC driver / Bugs / #716 No Support for LocalDB
Hope it helps someone, but looks like your only options on the Microsoft side of the fence is either regular SQL Server or SQL Express at this point (using the instance=SQLEXPRESS parameter in JDBC like I am doing at work for our Openfire server).
I hope this gets merged into Openfire. Won’t matter for me, as we’re using SQL Express and I have no intentions of switching right now. But I did think it was interesting. I was wondering if the performance would be as good as the embedded database. Because it’s easier to administer with SQL Server Management Studio: you just connect to the localdb instance and can do a lot with it. Our old server ran on the embedded database and had grown so large that the tool provided for administration required extra Java memory just to run and sometimes crashed. And that’s one of the main reasons we are on a new server now with a standalone database.