ASP.NET Membership
When you start creating a new ASP.NET 2.0 site with Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Web Developer Express (VWD) and want to start using it you’ll notice that a new file in the App_Data folder gets created besides your own database, namely the aspnetdb.mdf file. This extra database holds all the tables and stored procedures to let Membership, Roles, Profile etc run smoothly.
However a problem arises when you don’t want to use that dedicated new database when you want to deploy to your live webserver, certainly not when you use a host that only offers one database and charges you extra for another database. Luckely you can control things more when using the dedicated aspnet_regsql tool that ships with the .NET 2.0 framework.
What I’m about to describe in this article is how to use that tool to generate a SQL script that you can use to run on your other database with a tool like SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). In this example I’ll be using the installed Northwind database on my localhost developer machine.
Just start up a new DOS box by going to Start | Run and type in cmd followed by enter. In Windows Vista you push the blue windows logo button and in the field with the text Start Search you type in cmd followed by ctrl + shift + enter. The reason for that combination is that you must run it under Admin privileges or else the to be generated file doesn’t get writed to disk.
A new DOS box will appear and you just navigate to the following directory/folder:
Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\
If you’re not used to using DOS you can navigate to it by typing this in the DOS box: cd \windows\Microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50727 followed by enter.
Then you type in this line: aspnet_regsql.exe -S <server> -U <user> -P <password> -d <Database> -A all
e.g. aspnet_regsql.exe -S localhost -U <user> -P <password> -d Northwind -A all
Any questions about the above process then feel free to post a comment and I will reply.
