I don’t need to emphasize here that regular data backups are an elementary task in order to be able to restore data in the event of a system crash. The consequences of losing all data can, in the worst case, force one to go out of business. For this reason, single-user installations of JTL-Wawi in productive environments are not welcome by me. If the hard disk gives up the ghost and you have not made a current backup, the trouble is pre-programmed. But that should not be the topic here. Here I show you how to quickly and easily reintegrate the database file eazybusiness after a system failure.

The basic requirement is that you have installed Microsoft SQL Server Express with the management tools as in my installation instructions (path to the articles) and JTL-Wawi. In this case, do not start JTL-Wawi and do not create a new client. In Windows 7, after installing SQL Server, you can find SQL Server Management Studio in the Start menu or by typing “sql server mana” in Run. On Windows 8, just type “sql server mana” in the Start screen and you will find Management Studio in the search results afterwards. Click on SQL Server Management Studio to start the program.

I am using Management Studio for SQL Server 2012 here. However, the steps are the same for SQL Server 2005 and 2008. After starting the Management Studio, I first need to connect to the server. In the login window, your computer name>JTLWAWI should appear after Server name <. The authentication should be set to Windows Authentication. If you have made your local user the group of database administrators when installing SQL Server, after logging in you will have the necessary rights for the following actions. I then click on “Connect”.

After that, the Management Studio logs in with the teach JTLWAWI instance.

For SQL Server Express, I copy the eazybusiness.mdf and eazybusiness_log.ldf files to the DATA directory of the SQL Server installation (e.g.: C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL12.JTLWAWIMSSQLDATA).

Now I need to bind these two files in SQL Server. To do this, I switch back to SQL Server Management Studio and right-click on “Databases” in the Object Explorer. In the context menu I then select “Append…”.

In the window “Attach Databases” I click on the button “Add…” to attach the copied files eazybusiness.mdf and eazybusiness_log.ldf.

Usually the “Search database files” window jumps to the right place, so that I only have to mark the eazybusiness entry and finish the process by clicking the “OK” button.

In the “Attach Database” window, I also only have to click on the “OK” button at the end to reconnect the database.

In the end, the result will look like the screenshot below. Under Databases the folder with the system databases, which was newly created during the installation of the SQL server and below that the database for my JTL-Wawi test environment eazybusiness.