Last week I announced that SQL Server 2012 Cumulative Update #3 was released. A question came up about SqlLocalDb and I will try to address the current state of patching SqlLocalDb.

Please keep in mind that these comments are only relevant to cumulative updates – I do not know whether this is all true for service packs.

When SqlLocalDb was first released, there were a few ways to get it:

• Visual Studio 2012 betas
• SQL Server 2012 Express
• From the standalone feature pack installer

At that point, all of these sources included the RTM build (11.0.2100). Now that we are at CU3, people are curious: why aren't my SqlLocalDb instances updated with the cumulative update build? Especially since the CU installer tells them that it will do so:

The truth is that this is a bug in the cumulative update installer. I am not sure if the "fix" will be that the installer will in fact update LocalDB or if this specific screen will have "LocalDB" removed. Ideally it will be the former. I also don't know whether this fix will make it for the next CU.

The other question is: how do I really patch SqlLocalDb to be using the latest build?

You can download the updated standalone installer from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29062

When you run the install, it will tell you that it found an existing version and it is going to upgrade it. This will bring you to 11.0.2318 (not to CU3, which is 11.0.2332).

Until this is fixed (or until they publish a new version of the feature pack installer), this is as close as you're going to get to parity.

I will post more details as I receive them. Hope this helps.