Right, now that I know that remotely creating databases for my SQLEXPRESS instance is the way to go, it turns out that I can't access that instance remotely from ArcCatalog
I've tried and checked various things: The server (SQL Server 2008 R2) sits on a WS2008 R2 machine with ArcGIS 10.0 SP54, I'm trying to access it from Windows 8 with ArcGIS 10.2.1. I'm using Windows authentication, the same user is logged in on all machines, has remote desktop privileges (local admin rights, too), has sysadmin role on the SQL Server. Logging in remotely with SQL Server Management Studio works fine, it's only ArcCatalog (Add Database Server) that refuses to talk to my server. The error message says:
Register Database Server: Cannot connect to the database server
Failed to connect to Database Server.
Connecting locally works just fine.
Any suggestions?
Thanks, Martin