Visual Studio 2022 can connect to localdb but SSMS 18.10 can't

Question

Spanking brand-new installations of:

• Visual Studio 2022 Community (VS)
• SQL Server 2019 Dev (SQL)
• SQL Server Management Studio v18.10 (SSMS)

There are no other Visual Studio or SQL Server instances or installations.

A console program creates a localdb database using Entity Framework successfully. VS SQL Server Object Explorer documents this with a connection to (localdb)\MSSQLLocalDB using a connection string of:

Data Source=(localdb)\MSSQLLocalDB;Initial Catalog=master;
    Integrated Security=True;Connect Timeout=30;Encrypt=False;
    TrustServerCertificate=False;ApplicationIntent=ReadWrite;
    MultiSubnetFailover=False

But I can't get SSMS to connect to this localdb database instance.

I am trying to use this server name:

(localdb)\MSSQLLocalDB

What am I doing wrong? I get an immediate (2 second) response with:

The instance of SQL Server you attempted to connect to does not support encryption. (.Net SqlClient Data Provider)

I used sqllocaldb, and everything looks ok:

sqllocaldb info
MSSQLLocalDB
ProjectModels

sqllocaldb info MSSQLLocalDB
Name:               MSSQLLocalDB
Version:            15.0.4153.1
Shared name:
Owner:              GreenMachine\jean
Auto-create:        Yes
State:              Running
Last start time:    1/21/2022 11:38:11 AM
Instance pipe name: np:\\.\pipe\LOCALDB#878B8E4E\tsql\query 

So I tried another tack. I pointed my EF connection string to the local SQL Server instance:

 optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer("Data source = GreenMachine; Initial 
 Catalog=SamuraiAppData; Integrated Security=True; 
 TrustServerCertificate=True;")

And that worked - I got a new database created on that instance. It seems like SSMS can't connect to localdb!

Thanks for your ideas!

Answer 1

From the SSMS connection dialog, click the Options button in the lower right corner to expand the connection options. Ensure that Encrypt Connection is not checked.