c# - Check if SQL server (any version) is installed?

Question

I need to find if SQL server is installed on a machine. It could be any version of SQL server (7, 2005,8, sql express etc). We need to know this information as we are writing an installer and need to show to the user that if SQL server has not been found, the installation cannot proceed.

I have seen versions that use the registry, wmi, SMO or simply just connect to SQL server instance (although would not help here as we do not know the server name).

We are using the Wix Installer.

What is the correct way to do this?

JD

Answer 1

A simple way to list all SQL Servers on the network is this:

using System.Data;
using System.Data.Sql;
using System;

...

SqlDataSourceEnumerator sqldatasourceenumerator1 = SqlDataSourceEnumerator.Instance;
DataTable datatable1 = sqldatasourceenumerator1.GetDataSources();
foreach (DataRow row in datatable1.Rows)
{
    Console.WriteLine("****************************************");
    Console.WriteLine("Server Name:"+row["ServerName"]);
    Console.WriteLine("Instance Name:"+row["InstanceName"]);
    Console.WriteLine("Is Clustered:"+row["IsClustered"]);
    Console.WriteLine("Version:"+row["Version"]);
    Console.WriteLine("****************************************");
}

Taken from this blog post.