can we access the sql server r2 without using /sqlexpress in the server name

Because you can have multiple instances of SQL Servers installed on your system and each of them have different version.

So there is no way to distinguish them from each other if you do not specify to which instance do you want access.

Also you can use Aliases in SQL server to create custom names for your server :
http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2009/12/08/136830.aspx[^]

Hope it helps.

Hi,

as Amir says , multiple versions or multiple instance of sql server are running in your computer.

so you can do either of below solution,

1) Remove all other SQL instances, there should be only one instance of any version.
2) Stop all other SQL server services from "services.msc" and then use "."(current server) will work fine.


hope above solution will work for you,

thanks
-amit.

To add to previous answers, one of the instances can be a default instance which can be referred without specifying anything but the machine name. All other instances must be named instances and to connect to them, you have to define the name of the instance in your connection string.

For more information, see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143531.aspx[^]