(newbie) want to view a local backup of sql db

Hi

excuse my ignorance, never used heidi or indeed sql before...

my website uses a ms sql server 2012 sql database ... i want to be able to view the data thats on there as i want to make a list of my customers phone numbers.

anyway, i would prefer not to connect to the live database for fear of buggering something up in my inexperience, so i have created a backup of the database and downloaded it.

so now i have a .bak file on my hard drive and want to access it.

i've just downloaded heidisql and hoped it would be a simple thing to do but its asking me to make a session and asking me network type, hostname etc and i really don't know what i'm doing!

can anyone point me in the right direction please?

thanks!

Jim

heidisql can only connect to live databases, it can generally not read backup files.

It would also be helpful to know the format of the .bak file and/or which tool created it (extension .bak is about as generic as the word "car").

not sure of the format, but it was created in mylittlebackup which runs on my hosts servers.

am i able to make this backup into a full db and access it through heidi, as a local database?

thanks for your help!

You need a server first, then import a .sql backup, which you can edit as tables/views/... afterwards in HeidiSQL. But you definitely need a MySQL or MariaDB server first.

rather, he needs a local ms sql server, since it says above "ms sql server 2012". a free version of this exists and can be downloaded.

furthermore, mylittlebackup's ".bak" format appears to be the output of the ms sql command BACKUP DATABASE, which is NOT sql. It seems to be necessary to load such a file using the RESTORE DATABASE sql command.

PS: just found that a simpler solution to load .bak files exists: .http://sqlbackupandftp.com/restore/