ASP.NET SQL Server Database Installation

Beginning with the .NET Framework 2.0, ASP.NET has a rich new infrastructure that provides for a number of built-in features that would otherwise cost developers a lot of time and effort to build on their own.  These features include Membership, Role Management, Profiles, Web Parts Personalization, and Health Monitoring, among others.

To avail of these features, we will first need to install the Microsoft SQL Server database used by the SQL Server providers in ASP.NET.  We can use the ASP.NET SQL Server Registration Tool to
create this SQL Server database called ASPNETDB. 

The ASP.NET SQL Server Registration Tool file name is ASPNET_REGSQL.EXE

Pre-Requisites

The Pre-Requisites for running this tool include the following:

   a) Set execution policy (beyond machine default)
       e.g. set-executionpolicy -scope CurrentUser -executionPolicy Undefined

   b) .Net Framework 2.0 or later

   c) Installation User must be a DBO Sysadmin on SQL Server Instance (install creates a database)

Installation Procedures

As a best practice, you should run the ASP.NET SQL Server Registration tool from the Database server – not the Web server. 
The Aspnet_regsql.exe file is located in the [drive:]\%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319 folder on your server.

You can run Aspnet_regsql.exe without any command-line arguments to run a wizard that will walk you through specifying connection information for your SQL Server installation, and installing the database elements for the Membership, Role Management, Profile, Web Parts Personalization, and Health Monitoring features.

The wizard will walk you through the following steps:

Click Next.

Click Next.

Enter the Server info and authentication info and keep the Database <default> value.  Click Next.
Follow the rest of the wizard steps until completion.

Verification Procedure

To verify the success of the installation of the ASP.NET Database, you may do the following steps.

1) Go to SQL Server Management Studio

2) Log in to the appropriate database server

3) Verify that the tables in the image below exist.

4) Run a simple query against the dbo.aspnet_Users table to test the connection.  If no errors are thrown, then the installation was successful