Is LocalDB supported by Visual Studio 2010 in Entity Framework 5?

Question

Is LocalDB supported by Visual Studio 2010 in Entity Framework 5, on .NET 4.0?

Or am I doing it wrong? I'm getting a "The network path can't be found" issue when instantiating my model container with a connection string for LocalDB.

Here's the connection string:

var connectionString = "metadata=res://*/Model.csdl|res://*/Model.ssdl|res://*/Model.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=\"data source=(localdb)\v11.0;initial catalog=fablelane_com_db;integrated security=SSPI;multipleactiveresultsets=True;App=EntityFramework\"";

Edit 1 I'm receiving the following error when connecting, more specifically:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server).

Edit 2 I just figured out that changing to Visual Studio 11 beta doesn't work either. Still receiving the same error-message.

Answer 1

The problem was something as simple as a missing backslash to escape my database.

Notice how the database's name is "(localdb)\v11.0". The backslash in the original connectionstring is not escaped at all, so it handles "\v" as part of the connection string.

Escaping it by specifying "\\v" instead of "\v" worked.

Answer 2

LocalDB is part of SQL Server 2012 so installing EF 5.0 (which on .NET 4.0 behaves like EF 4.3.1) without SQL Server 2012 doesn't work. To use LocalDB from .NET 4.0 you need .NET 4.0.2 but the question is how it works with VS 2010 tooling for EF.

Answer 3

A bit late to be able to help, but I thought it could help others that walk in here (just like me).

A step by step instruction how to use LocalDB with Visual Studio 2010.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlexpress/archive/2011/11/28/using-localdb-in-visual-studio-2010.aspx