title: Connecting to SQL Server Express from Visual Studio
body: <p>I have SQL Server 2008 installed with Visual Studio 2010, I have downloaded a project which has database files created in Visual Studio project itself, now I want to connect to that database.</p>
  
  <p>I tried changing the connection string but unable to connect to the database.</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone tell me how to connect to the database, I have SQL Server 2008 (10.0.1600.22) installed on my machine</p>
  
  <p><strong>Updated connection string</strong>:</p>
  
  <p>Here is the connection string I am using </p>
  
  <pre><code>Data Source=SQLEXPRESS\;Initial Catalog=INVENTORY;uid=xxx;pwd=xxx
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>where <code>xxx\xxx</code> is my machine and my installed SQL Server instance name respectively.</p>