Installing SQL Server 2008 client tools, what a pain!

I am working for a different client now, and so have a different worksation build. Having had a quick poke around the development machine as one does, I noticed Visual Studio 2008 Standard edition, as well as Visual Studio Express Edition (VB) and the Express edition of Web Developer.

On the SQL side there is SQL tools for connecting to SQL Server 2005 and a link to the SQL Server 2008 Installation Center where SQL Server 2008 tools probably once were but are no longer. What I wanted to do was install SQL Server 2008 Client tools (Management Studio primarily) to allow me to connect to the SQL Server 2008 Database engine on a different server without having to physically log onto that server as I had been doing up until that point.

Figuring this was a simple enough task to do in half an hour, I got hold of the SQL Server 2008 Standard edition installation media and proceeded to install client tools. This went well up until the point I hit a rule error:-

Rule “Previous releases of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008″ failed

If you request further details for the error you soon realise that the error is referring to the version(s) of Visual Studio being RTM versions and not the minimum Service Pack 1 required by the SQL Server 2008 installer. I immediately sought to clarify this with installation documentation and on MSDN and it turns out that if you are installing any of:-

• BIDS
• Management tools (Basic or Full version)
• Integration Services

then SQL Server 2008 requires that ANY existing versions of Visual Studio 2008 be first upgraded to SP1 BEFORE attempting the client tools install. The order for doing this is also key, so start with the RTM version, SP1 for this is available here.

Next, if you have “Express” versions of Visual Studio 2008 installed on the same machine you can either Remove them using “Add/Remove Programs” in Control panel (this is what I did), or you can wait a very long time to download each SP1 for Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C# and the Express edition of web developer here,  NOTE: if Express editions are installed on your machine they WILL ALL NEED to be upgraded to SP1 BEFORE the SQL Server 2008 client tools will install!

When all SP1 upgrades have been done, restart the computer and repeat the SQL Server 2008 client tools install (using the standalone option (or add new features) within the SQL Server 2008 installer).

Hope that saves some time. Having just written this out, I also came across a useful link from the SQL Server team available here.

Happy programming!