Smart Client Data : Occasionally Connected Data

Q&A About SQL Server Everywhere

SmartClientData — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 05:57:00 GMT

Steve posted some answers to many of the questions about SQL Server Everywhere...

http://blogs.msdn.com/stevelasker/

SQL Server Everywhere - SQL Mobile Unleashed

Steve.Lasker — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 19:38:00 GMT

Today Paul Flessner announced that SQL Mobile will be released as SQL Server Everywhere Edition. http://www.microsoft.com/sql/letter.mspx Details are yet to be announced. But to get a feel for what the new product will do, check out this walkthrough: The little database that could.

Steve

VSLive San Francisco Presentations

SmartClientData — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 00:31:00 GMT

At VSLive I presented two sessions. One for Occasionally Connected Smart Clients and another on Advancements in Data Access.

The Occasionally Connected Smart Client session focused on what we’re working on post VS 2005. Some of which should be in Orcas, some of which will follow afterwards. Mostly the session was about providing an overview of the evolving application model to leverage SOA based architecture, but not cripple end users at the same time. In the session I talked about some of the early thinking on some of the Occasionally Connected Systems compnents.

The Advancements in Data Access session focused on a few questions that come up a lot around the VS Data features. In particular I covered:

How to separate your Typed DataSets from your TableAdapters
Increasing the performance of Typed DataSet Serialization by skipping schema with DataSet.SchemaSerializationMode = ExcludeSchema
Implementing a common interface for TableAdapters, ITableAdapter
Doing a hierarchical update within a transactions

Slides & Demos

Recording of the VSLive Session

Enjoy

Steve

Embedding SQL Server Express into Custom Applications

SmartClientData — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:03:00 GMT

Rob Walters, from the SQL Team, and I worked on an article for working with SQL Express in Windows Forms applications. There are a couple of quirks when it comes to Click Once that have been included in this MSDN article.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsse/html/EmSQLExCustApp.asp

Steve

PDC05 - Windows Forms: Occasionally Connected Smart Clients

SmartClientData — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 00:10:00 GMT

At PDC I presented a session covering Occasionally Connected Smart Clients that can leverage SQL Server Mobile, RDA, ClickOnce running in the background. The sample contains some early thinking on where we're heading post Whidbey, in addition to what can be done today with Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey).

Code Samples for August CTP of Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey )

PowerPoint

SQL Server 2005 Database file

Steve

The little database that could. Deploying SQL Mobile as a local / single user database across Microsoft Mobile devices

SmartClientData — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 02:31:00 GMT

The little database that could. Deploying SQL Server Mobile 2005 as a local / single user database across Microsoft Mobile devices including the Tablet PC...(read more)

Tech Ed '05: Client and Middle Tier Data Caching with SQL Server 2005

SmartClientData — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 20:04:00 GMT

Last week Pablo Castro and I presented two topics related to caching. Pablo presented caching datasets in memory and Service Broker for use in ASP.net projects. The second half of the presentation covered how to cache data on the client. The demos I presented were geared around caching for longer periods of time then what in-memory caching can support.
Since we only had a limited amount of time for content that really deserved sessions of their own, we had a lot to cover and had to be fairly high level without the ability to drill down into the demos. For the client caching half I covered the use of SQL Mobile Remote Data Access as well as SQL Server Merge Replication. RDA is only available with the SQL Mobile platform, however SQL Mobile now runs on the Tablet PC and is no longer restricted to the CE/Pocket PC platform. This is a huge advantage to developers that are writing mobile apps that span device and Tablet PC as they can no write one set of data access code and use a single database across these two very different platforms.
Merge replication is actually available for both SQL Mobile as well as SQL Express. Due to limited time I didn’t have time to demo both SQL Express as well as SQL Mobile, however the merge replication scenario is just as useful with SQL Express.

There were a few demos that I showed, and several others that I just didn’t have time to cover so I’ve included them here for download.

These samples should all work with Whidbey B2 and SQL Yukon

Session Abstract:

At one point or another, almost every developer has had to deal with the problem of building a data cache for their application -- whether it is for performance or to enable offline capabilities. In both scenarios, there are a number of issues that need to be addressed: How do I know the cache is invalid?; How do I synchronize the cache?; And do I have all my data or only a subset in the cache?; etc. In most cases, every developer implements their own favorite flavour of the data cache solution. In this session we look at a number of new features in SQL Server 2005 that are specifically designed to address this problem and look at two specific solutions, one using replication, and one using Query Notifications.

Samples:

SQL Mobile with RDA
This demo uses SQL Mobile and Remote Data Access to pull a customer table from a remote database. This sample is fairly simple and demonstrates the very basic things you need to know to leverage RDA. To configure RDA please use the SQL Books Online to configure the web server to proxy your RDA queries to your OleDB database.

SQL Mobile with Replication
This demos is similar to the RDA sample above except that it uses SQL Server Merge Replication. The demo is fairly simplistic but covers the basics to leverage Merge Replication.

Version Numbers
When attempting to verify your application is the correct version the question must be asked, which version number are you talking about? Since RTM we have File Version and Assembly Version. With ClickOnce we now have a Deployment version. This sample simply shows the different API’s to call for each.

Data Directories
Where did your data files go? With ClickOnce we have yet another location to place data files. There are several different API’s to identify a Data Directory but they aren’t always accessible. This demo simply shows several of the key API’s:

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetData("DataDirectory")
My.Application.Deployment.DataDirectory AKA System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.DataDirectory
Application.LocalUserAppDataPath
Application.UserAppDataPath

Occasionally Connected ClickOnce w/Replication
This is the more complete scenario. This is also a finished version of the sample I presented in a Yukon Webcast several weeks earlier. In this demo I essentially demonstrate how to deploy a custom app that leverages the Outlook 2003 model for syncing. As long as the app has network connectivity the server used for Database Syncing and Application Updates, the application will constantly sync any database changes from the client to the server. Once a sync is completed the application will check the database for the required application version. If the version of the app in the database is newer then the currently deployed version on the users desktop, the application will download updates using the ClickOnce API’s. All of this happens on a background thread so the user can continue to interact with their application while the sync operations happen behind the scenes.

The important concepts in the demo relate to abstracting the database sync and application updates from specific actions the user must take. You users shouldn’t have to restart their app when the network comes available just to find out a new version is available. The user shouldn’t have to press a button to push their changes from their Tablet PC to the server.

Misc technologies in this sample:
• BackgroundWorker
• ClickOnce API’s
• SQL Mobile
• SQL Server Merge Replication

Powerpoint for the Tech Ed '05 Session

I'll try to field as many questions on the demos as possible, but I didn't try and explain how to configure RDA or Merge Replication. The docs are fairly robust in this area.

There's a readme in most of the samples that desribes the content.

Thanks,

Steve Lasker