Switching to SQL Server

Although localDB proved itself to be a great development choice, it's not a good idea to use it in production as well. That's why we'll replace it with SQL Server. As for the chosen edition, we can either go for Express, Web, Standard, or Enterprise, depending on what we need and/or can afford.

For the sake of simplicity, we'll use SQL Server 2017 Express Edition, which can be downloaded for free from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-editions-express.

Needless to say, we need to install it on a machine that is reachable from our web server via a Local Area Network (LAN) or within the web server itself, although this is definitely not a recommended choice; both IIS and SQL Server are resource-intensive; hence, it's advisable to keep them in two separate environments.

Installing SQL Server 2017 Express

The installation process is pretty straightforward. Unless we don't need anything specific, we can just go for the basic type:

Eventually, we'll be prompted...