MOVING DATA TO A REMOTE SERVER
Releasing a site to IIS on your local machine is pretty straightforward. You simply copy the data to
a new location, configure IIS, change a few security settings, and that’s it. Because the site continues
to use your local copy of SQL Server, it will run fine.
However, in the real world when you need to move your site to an external server or host, things are
not so easy. Although copying the files that make up your site is usually extremely simple using an
FTP program, copying data from your SQL Server database to your host is quite often a bit trickier.
This is because most web hosts don’t support the free Express or LocalDB editions, so you can’t
just simply copy the .mdf files to the App_Data folder at your remote host. Instead, these hosts often
offer the full versions of SQL Server, which you can access either with a web-based management
tool or with tools such as SQL Server Management Studio.