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I am not so into .NET technologies (I came from Java) and I have a question.

I followed a tutorial that uses Entity Framework to access data in a database. It works fine.

My question is: at the moment I have not yet installed SQL Server or other RDBMS on my machine. I can access to this database directly from Visual Studio (in my project structure I go to the App_Data that contains a .mdf file.

So what is this file? Is it something like a "file system based" DB?

Cindy Meister
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AndreaNobili
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    The mdf file contains the database, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1175882/what-is-an-mdf-file. – kaffekopp Oct 29 '18 at 09:04
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    That MDF file is a SQL Server database file, which connected to your project using SQL Server Express by using `AttachDBFileName` parameter. It automatically created when MVC project with user authentication enabled was chosen. – Tetsuya Yamamoto Oct 29 '18 at 09:04
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    If you're using a `.mdf`, you **DO HAVE** SQL Server installed - either a "full" version, or the free SQL Server **Express**, or the developer-targeted "LocalDB" version. A `.mdf` file is **not** an "embedded" database - you **must have** SQL Server installed in some way, shape or form to use it – marc_s Oct 29 '18 at 09:49

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