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Aaron Bertrand

Aaron is a senior consultant for SQL Sentry, Inc., makers of performance monitoring and event management software for SQL Server, Analysis Services, and Windows. He has been blogging here at sqlblog.com since 2006, focusing on manageability, performance, and new features; has been a Microsoft MVP since 1997; tweets as @AaronBertrand; and speaks frequently at user group meetings and SQL Saturday events.

Download a standalone installer for SQL 2008 Management Studio Express

In October, I complained (surprise, surprise) on behalf of Express users that you had to download an entire Express package (with Tools or with Advanced Services) in order to install the basic Management Studio Express, even if you already had the engine installed and had no need for another instance.  (For SQL Server 2005, a standalone installer was made available very early on.)  While articles like this one by fellow MVP Andrea Montanari proved to help a lot of people figure this out, there still seemed to be a loud cry for a standalone installer that didn't require jumping through all of these hoops.

Well, better late than never.  Bill Ramos announced yesterday that they have released a standalone installer for SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express, in both x86 and x64 flavors.  You can download it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=08e52ac2-1d62-45f6-9a4a-4b76a8564a2b

Now, when I download the 64-bit installer, it is 175 MB, and it seems to be a full-on setup program for either Express with Tools or Express with Advanced Services (I stopped the install when it asked me if I wanted to create a new instance of SQL Server 2008 or to modify an existing instance).  I will download again later this weekend and try it out, but so far, it is not the "no-frills" installer that Bill advertises.  If you have a different experience, please let me know.

Published Saturday, February 21, 2009 11:32 AM by AaronBertrand

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Bill Ramos said:

Hi Aaron,

    The Express setup was a modified version of the Express with Tools setup with the logic to install a database engine simply disabled. The prompt to create/upgrade instance can be ignored.

Cheers,

Bill

February 21, 2009 7:58 PM
 

AaronBertrand said:

Yes, this installer will lay down the tools only (though the first few screens in setup are very misleading), as long as you don't already have SSMS 2008 installed.  (e.g. you can not run SSMS 2008 and SSMSE 2008 side-by-side; if you have the SSMSE 2008 and install SSMS 2008, it upgrades; if you have SSMS 2008 already, setup for SSMSE 2008 blocks the install.  I did not try with SSMS 2005 or SSMSE 2005 installed.)

February 22, 2009 4:32 PM
 

Reflective Perspective - Chris Alcock » The Morning Brew #292 said:

PingBack from http://blog.cwa.me.uk/2009/02/23/the-morning-brew-292/

February 23, 2009 3:38 AM
 

Rory Becker said:

Oh come on .. that download was 175Mb, provided 7 pages of 32 options.

All I want is to install the 2008 client tools. finally found a way of selecting these, only to be told that I require 982Mb of Free space.

I already have the 2005 Client tools. What the h*** is so different to require so much extra space?

That is ***ing ridiculous.

February 23, 2009 7:03 AM
 

noeldr said:

This is SAD. I would expect such "fixed" version from an amateur, but from M$ it is just plain SAD!

February 23, 2009 1:05 PM
 

Tom said:

Ugh.  I spent several hours trying to figure out this "simplified and fixed" version.  I'm still not sure if I got it right.

*I only want to install SSMSEE 2008*.  The link actually downloads what appears to be a full install tool for SQL Server.  There are some rumors that despite all the appearances, it is actually not a full install.  This is all very confusing for me.  Professional software installation should not mislabel the actual product that's being installed.  I've been messing around this thing for hours, and the variation seems endless.

It's not a standalone installer until the procedure goes like this:

Run installer (which correctly identifies the product being installed), click next, click next, click next, click finish.

If I have to fake out the installer by asking it to install a new instance of SQL Server when I don't actually want that, I'm not dealing with finished software.

May 28, 2009 1:46 AM
 

jigar said:

thx a lot

January 24, 2010 9:37 AM
 

Kev said:

Wow, thanks Tom, I was going crazy here trying to figure out how to get SSMSEE 2008.  I didn't realize you could fake it out like that.  (I obviously feel your pain.)  Thanks so much for the tip!

February 8, 2010 12:31 AM
 

Kev said:

(This was on Windows 2008 R2 trial with SQL 2008 Express.)

February 8, 2010 12:31 AM
 

Ed Anderson said:

I wanted to install JUST Management Studio Express, so I followed these instructions. What I got was an installation that included an instance of the database and the tools. Not what's advertised here.

March 31, 2010 11:58 AM
 

AaronBertrand said:

Please follow the instructions here:

http://adjix.com/t9t4

March 31, 2010 1:47 PM
 

Aaron Bertrand said:

Last February, I blogged about something I was initially very happy about: a stand-alone installer for

March 31, 2010 2:14 PM
 

Smith said:

is it possible to install SSMS with my application setup?

April 26, 2011 9:02 AM
 

TimH said:

170MB of non-working bloat that takes forever to run - only to tell you it wont work.  What kind of retards released this?!

It requires another component (powershell) - that you can't find on their own Bing/Bung search engine of their down site?!?!.  As always have to rely on google to resolve.

Pathetic.  What kind of retards released this?!

May 4, 2011 10:25 PM
 

AaronBertrand said:

TimH, this blog post was written over two years ago. In your searching did you think to search for a newer version? To wit, after a very quick search I was able to determine that you can download the 2008 R2 version of Management Studio Express here:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/Database/InstallOptions.aspx

May 4, 2011 10:36 PM
 

Raymond said:

Hi Aaron,

Please do I still need .net 3.5 installed to run this installer. the installation failed when I tried it yesterday. I have .net 4 installed.

thanks,

Raymond

June 13, 2011 10:14 AM
 

AaronBertrand said:

Raymond, why do you still want to use the 2008 version? I highly recommend the 2008 R2 version... it will be able to manage 2008 instances just fine.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=56AD557C-03E6-4369-9C1D-E81B33D8026B

Also see my remarkably similar previous reply to TimH.

June 13, 2011 10:21 AM
 

Raymond said:

Aaron,

I clicked on the link you provided and it tells me I still need .net 3.5. I am wondering why this is the case seeing it was published 20th April 2010 after the release of .net 4.0

June 13, 2011 10:34 AM
 

AaronBertrand said:

Did you try the installer? The instructions at the bottom just might be out of date (recycled from the 2008 download page).

June 13, 2011 10:54 AM
 

Raymond said:

Ok. I will try it. I have not tried it yet.

June 13, 2011 12:58 PM
 

Harvey Myers said:

Wow, even after reading all of the above, this process is probably one of the most rediculous endeavors that I've had to wrestle with in over 30 years of software development. ESPECIALLY since Microsoft is supposed to be such a world leader. I actually ty to defend M$ against the Linux naysayers,but with this kind of installation routine after all these years, i'm just sayin' M$ should be embarrassed about this installer.

February 20, 2012 8:55 AM
 

Taz said:

I have to say, as a professional developer for 15+ years I find this situation frankly really poor. Just building a new new environment and gone through the same hassle, this must be my 5th download. The version I have won't browse stored procedures on a SQL2000 enterprise server (SP4).

150MB installer for SQL management studio (complete with useless scripting tools) is not acceptable.

March 1, 2012 4:20 AM
 

Aaron Bertrand said:

Taz, what does "won't browse" mean? Do you get an error message? Is it possible it's a permissions issue, or the procedures are encrypted? Is this occurring on all SQL 2000 instances or just one, and against all stored procedures or just some? I doubt you'll get much sympathy since SQL 2000 is long out of support, but your issue might not be the free tool's fault.

March 1, 2012 9:51 AM
 

Steven Przybylowski said:

I find it irritating that MS continues to confuse tools with services.  On an enterprise secured system, there are very few instances where I would install tools on the server itself.  We do not allow users to remote into the server to manage databases using server based tools as this is a material security weakness

But to install these same tools on a client workstation, I must distribute the entire CD which is problematic on a very large network.  Additionally, the CD includes items subject to license which I do not want to have distributed freely around the enterprise.

Why does not MS provide a separate package to install the complete toolset?  SSMSSE is limited and not very useful in a multi-domain secured network.

March 27, 2012 10:52 AM
 

Francois said:

....and it gets worse.....

Following some of these links I tried to download SQL 2012 Management Studio.

It's a whopping 600MB.....

March 30, 2012 6:20 AM

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