Can't use SQL Server database on a networkpath I am working on a project for a very long time now. It's a .NET application which works with a SQL Server database (.mdf, LINQ to SQL). Now I am almost finished and wanted to run some tests. 

But here is where I totally screw up. Until now I had my application only running on my own pc with the .mdf file being stored locally. What I actually planned was an application which connects to a database stored on a networkpath from different machines.

Now I am reading that this is not possible with SQL Server databases?! And I also get the message:


  The file xxx.mdf is on a network path that is not supported for
  database files.


Can anybody think of an option how I could solve this problem without reprogramming the whole database stuff again?

One possible a clearly desperate solution I thought of first, was to:


Let my application find the database file on the network path
Copy the .mdf + .log files to a local folder
Do the Read/Write operations...or whatever the user wants to do
And at the end copy/replace the whole .mdf + .log files back to the network folder


If there is no other solution for my problem, would my solution work? If it would, what would be a possibility to avoid concurrent updates?

Please help and thanks in advance!
An MDF files is not the database, as such. It is merely the on-disk storage used by the SQL Server database engine.

When your app "uses" the MDF, it is actually attaching them to an SQL Server install and running queries against that. This is transparent really.

Instead of this, you can install SQL Server on the network (even Express edition), attach tehe database, and connect to that from all your app installations on the network.

This SO answer has way more details: https://stackoverflow.com/q/10366586/27535