SQLServerException while trying to use Fitnesse and DbFit and SQL Server

I am new to both (Java) FitNesse and SQL Server, I want to have a basic SQL test working with DbFit,

I have the following in root:

!path c:\fitnesse\lib\dbfit.jar
!path c:\fitnesse\lib\fitlibrary.jar
!path c:\fitnesse\lib\sqljdbc4.jar
|Import|
|dbfit.SqlServerTest|

I have the following in my HelloWorldTest,

!contents -R2 -g -p -f -h

!|dbfit.SqlServerTest|

|Connect|LOCALSQLEXPRESS|sa|Password|somePassword:|

|eg.Division|
|numerator|denominator|quotient?|
|10       |2          |5        |
|12.6     |3          |4.2      |
|100      |4          |33       |  

What I have tried:

• I have double checked my SQLExpress username and password and the SqlServer instance is at localhost.I doubt this is a firewall issue. (My understaning of firewall is quite weak admittedly.)
• Looking at Sql Server Configuration Manager (SSCM),
  • I see that "SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) is running as Process with ID 2316,
  • Using the PowerShell command "nestat -a -no | Select-String 2316", I see that the process on port 55618.
• In SSCM, I then create alias called "LOCALSQLEXPRESS" in both "SQL Native Client 11.0 Configuration (32bit)" and "SQL Native Client 11.0 Configuration" as I have no idea what my JDBC is using. (Apparently, JDBC for SQL Server does not support named instance, I got an exception telling me so when I was trying to connect to \localhost\SQLEXPRESS directly) I have also enabled "TCP/IP" and "Shared Memory" in "Protocols for SQLEXPRESS".

I am getting the following error when I run the test:

com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException: The TCP/IP connection to the host LOCALSQLEXPRESS, port 1433 has failed. Error: "null. Verify the connection properties. Make sure that an instance of SQL Server is running on the host and accepting TCP/IP connections at the port. Make sure that TCP connections to the port are not blocked by a firewall.".

(Note the port number of 1433, despite my alias point to port 55618.)

This is my first post at StackOverflow, please excuse any silliness. Can anyone shed any light?

I'm hoping lingo_journey already had worked out the issue by now. For others who may have same problem, I initially also couldn't make the named instance work with the multi-parameter Connect.

To solve the issue, I switched to connection string as parameter for Connect:

1) ensured that the SQL Server Browser service is running (as mentioned in the comments above)

2) changed the Connect parameter as below:

!| Connect | jdbc:sqlserver://localhost\SQLEXPRESS;databaseName=DB_NAME;integratedSecurity=true |

The following worked as well using the SQL Server authentication (which is probably more applicable to lingo_journey:

!| Connect | jdbc:sqlserver://localhost\SQLEXPRESS;databaseName=DB_NAME;user=user1;password=Welcome!|

Note than in some examples I saw on the web, the sqlserver: has been omitted from the connection string which did not work for me.