One of the things when setting up an demo environment (a fresh install) is to integrate the Northwind sample database on the demo environment. I normally just use a SQL Server Express for demos and I take Northwind to have data to play with, what else. I know there is some discussion around Northwind, but I for myself know that anyone in the audience knows Northwind, so no need to explain 15 valueable minutes on a more complex Schema.

So a blank SQL Server Express install on my machine is taking me to the following steps:

1. Download the Northwind sample database from download.microsoft.com
2. Run the Setup with the default settings. On my box the installed directory is "c:\SQL Server 2000 Sample Databases"
3. Open a Command Prompt
4. Change to the script directory, in my case cd "c:\sql server 2000 sample databases"
5. Execute the following command:
   sqlcmd -S (local)\sqlexpress -E -i instnwnd.sql
   (assuming that your SQL Server Express is installed with default settings which is the named instance SQLEXPRESS)

That's it. Northwind is now installed on SQL Server Express.