SQL Mobile Blog

New blog site for SQL Mobile

SQLMobile — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 16:18:00 GMT

Hi,

After the rebranding of SQL Mobile to SQL Server Everywhere Edition, we have created new blog site for SQL Server Everywhere Edition. The name of the new blog is SqlServerEverywhere and the link to the site is http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlservereverywhere/ .

Please use this blog in future to get latest blogs on SQL Server Everywhere Edition which was earlier known as SQL Mobile. We have migrated some of the earlier blogs to this new site for your convenience. Please start posting your thoughts, queries or information related to SQL Server Everywhere Edition at http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlservereverywhere/

Thanks

Sachin Sinha

Program Manager, SQL Server Everywhere Edition

SQL Server Everywhere Edition Community Technology Preview

SQLMobile — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:04:00 GMT

SQL Server Everywhere Edition Community Technology Preview

A Community Technology Preview of SQL Server Everywhere Edition, the newest addition to the SQL Server family is being announced at TechEd on Monday, June 12^th. The CTP will be available at www.microsoft.com/sql/everywhere. SQL Server Everywhere Edition is the next generation of SQL Server Mobile, offering essential relational database functionality in a compact footprint, ideal for embedding in mobile and desktop applications.

For CTP the SQL Server Everywhere Edition MSI is uploaded on the web. This MSI contains only the desktop runtime bits of SQL Server Everywhere Edition. Runtime bits include the Storage Engine, Query Processor, OLEDB Stack, ADO.Net stack and the client side connectivity components. This MSI can be installed on any machine (even on machine which doesn’t have SQL Server 2005 or Visual Studio 2005). You need to be an administrator to install this MSI. When the MSI is installed SQL Server Everywhere Edition runtime bits are placed under %PROGRAM FILES%\Microsoft SQL Server Everywhere\ directory. The ADO.Net provider Dll will be GACed during the installation.

Tools support: Developing desktop application using SQL Server Everywhere Edition:

In SQL Mobile when we supported developing desktop applications for Tablet PC, the development story was not very smooth. User needs to do some manual copy of Dll to make it working. Now with SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP, we enable a smooth development story for desktop applications. No manual steps are involved. To make the development story complete we also enabled smooth deployment (ClickOnce)

ClickOnce / Data Directory support:

Along with the SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP, the bootstrap package for SQL Server Everywhere Edition is available on the web to enable click once scenario. Developers can download both the MSI and click once bootstrap and install it. Once they complete developing desktop application with SQL Server Everywhere Edition, they can use this bootstrap package to enable ClickOnce deployment on desktops. Data Directory macro is also enabled when connection is established through SqlCeConnection object.

Uniform database story across device and desktop:

Since SQL Server Everywhere Edition is build over the SQL Mobile technology, we retain database compatibility between these two. With Whidbey SP1, developers will get the device bits of SQL Server Everywhere Edition. Since the database compatibility is maintained, users can copy the database from device to desktop or vice versa and continue to use the file. With this we enable a uniform database story from device to desktop.

Redistributing SQL Server Everywhere Edition MSI:

Developers can package the SQL Server Everywhere Edition MSI along with their desktop application setup. During their setup they can invoke the MSI and SQL Server Everywhere Edition bits will be placed on the central %PROGRAMFILES%%\Microsoft SQL Server Everywhere\ directory. You need to have admin rights to run this MSI. Whenever SQL Server Everywhere Edition is installed through MSI (under admin rights) then Microsoft will be able to service it.

Developers can also copy and package SQL Server Everywhere Edition Dll’s along with their applications. In this case Microsoft will not be servicing these Dlls.

Database Management support:

Databases which are created through SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP can be managed through SQL Server Management Studio. Through SQL Server Management Studio all database operations on SQL Server Everywhere Edition is enabled. SQL Server Management Studio which shipped with SQL Server 2005 RTM, SP1 will still say SQL Mobile in UI. Since SQL Server Everywhere Edition is built over SQL Mobile technology the dialog which says SQL Mobile will continue to work for SQL Server Everywhere Edition. With SQL Server 2005 SP2 release, those dialogs will start to say SQL Server Everywhere Edition.

Development tools support:

In Visual Studio 2005 RTM all dialogs which continue to say SQL Mobile will continue to work for SQL Server Everywhere Edition. With Visual Studio 2005 SP1, those dialogs will be changed to SQL Server Everywhere Edition.

Synchronization with SQL Server 2005:

SQL Mobile which shipped with SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 support synchronization with SQL Server 2005, using the SQL Mobile Server tools installation. The same setup will continue to work for SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP.

We are waiting for you to use SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP and looking for your feedback. I am Manikandan, Development Lead in SQL Server Everywhere Group.

Thanks

-Mani

SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition CTP

SQLMobile — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 11:00:00 GMT

Your Data, Any Place, Any Time

SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition CTP Edition is the new version of SQL Server Mobile, and is an important product release in realizing the vision of the Microsoft’s Data Platform team – “Your Data, Any Place, Any Time”. SQL Server Everywhere CTP is being announced in the TechEd on June 12, 2006 and is the new addition to the SQL Server Family and it will be available at www.microsoft.com/sql/everywhere or at download center

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=85e0c3ce-3fa1-453a-8ce9-af6ca20946c3&displaylang=en

The announcement of the release of SQL Server Everywhere Edition by Paul Flessener on April 6^th had generated extremely positive response from the MVP’s, customer and the media and this release of the CTP in about two months after the announcement is a great achievement and reflects the commitment of the team to realize the Microsoft’s vision in Data Platform technology.

SQL Mobile was released with VS2005 and SQL Server 2005 in 2005 and it was supported on devices, tablet PCs and partially on desktop. SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP is the re-branding of SQL Mobile 3.0 with the desktop restriction removed which will enable user to develop and deploy application on desktop independent of Visual Studio 2005 or SQL Server 2005. SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP will result in the deployment of the small database pervasively across millions of Desktops and Tablet PC’s across the world.

SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP provides a lightweight, compact, but rich subset of the capabilities found in other SQL Server editions. Beyond having rich local data management capabilities, SQL Server Everywhere Edition will also include support for seamlessly synchronizing with other SQL Server editions and provides features that promote building rich client applications that operate effectively in today’s increasingly “occasionally connected” environment. SQL Server Everywhere Edition also shares a common programming model with the other SQL Server editions, enabling developers to transfer skills and knowledge quickly and easily. The CTP of SQL Server Everywhere Edition contains the runtime bits only and the final release before the end of this calendar year will contain the device support as well.

What you get with the CTP

The SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP contains runtime bits only packaged in MSI (SQLServerEv31-EN.msi) and a zip file which contains ClickOnce files.

The SQL Server Everywhere Edition MSI will be available on the web at the download center. When user downloads and install this MSI then it will always get installed in the fixed location. The reason for this forced fixed location installation is to take care of future serviceability of SQL Server Everywhere Edition. The installation of SQL Server Everywhere Edition will also install the provider (System.Data.SqlServerCe.dll) in the GAC (global assembly cache) and register the OLEDB provide (sqlceoledb30.dll). This requires admin privilege on the machine hence SQL Server Everywhere Edition can only be installed with admin privilege. Non-admin install is not supported. When installed, SQL Server Everywhere Edition bits will go in following location

%Program Files%\Microsoft SQL Server Everywhere\v3.1

So if program files directory is in C drive then SQL Server Everywhere Edition runtime binaries will get installed in following directory;

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server Everywhere\v3.1

After installing SSEv CTP, it will add an entry in the Add or Remove Programs as “Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition CTP”.

New Features:

Apart from doing the re-branding, SQL Server Everywhere Edition will have additional features as compared to SQL Mobile 3.0 and they are;

· |DataDirectory| support

· ClickOnce support

DataDirectory:

|DataDirectory| (enclosed in pipe symbols) is a substitution string that indicates the path to the database. It eliminates the need to hard-code the full path which leads to several problems as the full path to the database could be serialized in different places. DataDirectory also makes it easy to share a project and also to deploy an application.

For example, instead of having the following connection string:

"Data Source= c:\program files\MyApp\Mydb.sdf"

Using DataDirectory, you can have the following connection string:

“Data Source = |DataDirectory|\Mydb.sdf”

ClickOnce:

ClickOnce is a new application deployment technology supported by SQL Server Everywhere Edition that simplifies deploying a Windows-based application to a Web server or network file share. For administrators, deploying or updating an application is simply a matter of updating files on a server; without individually updating every client. Visual Studio provides full support for publishing and updating applications deployed with ClickOnce. ClickOnce deployment is available for projects created with Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual J#, but not for Visual C++.

To integrate ClickOnce with SQL Server Everywhere Edition, user will need to download the ClickOnce ZIP files and nzip them in the proper folder under BootStrapper directory.

Please see the KB article linked in the download page of the CTP for more info on these two new items.

SQL Server Everywhere Edition is not targeted to be used under IIS when the connection is established thru SqlCeConnection object. Any such usage is unsupported. However, in a very limited and restricted scenarios, ISVs may choose to use SQL Server Everywhere Edition under IIS by setting AppDomain property.

There would be more blogs on this from various member of the team to provide more detail information on new features.

We would be glad to receive your feedbacks on the SQL Server Everywhere Edition CTP. Please feel free to ask any question or discuss any issue related to the CTP. Bye for now.

Sachin Sinha,

Program Manager

Note: We will be renaming our blog site from 'sqlmobile' to 'sqleverywhere' in some time. We will keep you posted on this till then keep blogging on sqlmobile.

Sync With Access

SQLMobile — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 13:00:00 GMT

Traditionally on Windows CE, CEDB was used as the local store. From Windows Mobile 5.0 onwards EDB is the preferred local store but it doesn’t have query capabilities. SQL Mobile and soon SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition (SSEV) is the local storage if applications need data query capabilities. ADOCE provided functionality to synchronize a CEDB database with MS Access on desktop. ADOCE is not supported in Windows Mobile 2005 and those customers/ISVs that used ADOCE to synchronize CEDB with Access desktop database are seeing a gap in this functionality. Hence these customers/ISVs don’t have a good migration path when they move to Windows Mobile 2005. To address this functionality gap we are implementing Sync with Access to synchronize SQL Mobile with Access. Customers/ISVs can migrate from CEDB/ADOCE to SQL Mobile/Sync with Access. Providing SQL Mobile synchronization with MS Access will also speed up the SQL Mobile adoption. A solution developed using SQL Mobile/SSEV and MS Access sync will have the capability to scale up to SQL Mobile/SSEV and SQL Server replication solution.

The beta for this solution should be available in August 2006 and a final release before end of 2006.

Main features of “Sync with Access” are as follows

Provides a synchronization solution between SQL Mobile/SSEV and MS Access. Data conversion should be done while synchronizing the data.

Synchronization will happen if there is an active ActiveSync connection between the device and the desktop.

There will be no update to SQL Mobile/SSEV on the device. Only PC-side component.

Based on existing RDA replication model. Replication setup and programming is exactly the same as RDA today

Applications written today do not need to be updated if the solution is upsized from access to SQL Server

No conflict detection/resolution will be implemented. If a solution requires a conflict resolution, SQL Server merge replication should be used.

The solution will only work with SQL Mobile 3.0 and later versions. Compatibility with SQL CE 2.0 is not provided.

The beta for this solution should be available in August 2006 and a final release before end of 2006.

“Sync with Access” – Architecture

Manish Agnihotri,

Program Manager

SQL Mobile on Desktop

SQLMobile — Mon, 01 May 2006 10:36:00 GMT

Hi and welcome to the SQL Mobile blog!

The SQL Mobile team wants to make this blog a place where we can provide all kinds of information about SQL Mobile and get your feedback. A quick introduction: my name is Sitaram Raju and I am the Group Manager for SQL Mobile group.

The big recent news is that SQL Mobile will be available on desktop. Paul Flessner announced it on April 6^th, 2006 and SQL Mobile will be re-branded as SQL Server Everywhere Edition or SSEv for short. You can find more information about it at http://blogs.msdn.com/stevelasker/archive/2006/04/10/SqlEverywhereInfo.aspx.

One big customer feature request has been to make SQL Mobile available on Windows CE. Currently if you download the SQL Mobile Device SDK at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5BD8ABAA-5813-4DB3-B23A-24551DE2ECC1&displaylang=en you will get cabs for all supported processors of Windows CE 5.0 and a cab for just the ARM processor for Windows CE 4.2.Customers have requested:

1. To make available SQL Mobile for all supported processors of Windows CE 4.2. The full processor list is ARMv4, ARMv4i, MIPSII, MIPSII FP, MIPSIV, MIPSIV FP, SH4 and x86.

2. To make SQL Mobile for Windows CE 4.2 available as Platform Builder component so that a customized Windows CE 4.2 image with SQL Mobile can be created.

3. To make SQL Mobile for Windows CE 5.0 available as Platform Builder component so that a customized Windows CE 5.0 image can be created.

The first two features will be available shortly after .NET CF 2.0 SP1 is released. The link to .NET CF 2.0 SP1 Beta is at http://blogs.msdn.com/netcfteam/archive/2006/04/21/580901.aspx. The third feature will be available with the June update of Platform Builder.

This is just the first post. The various members of SQL Mobile team will be posting to this blog and we look forward to your comments and responses.

Thanks,

Sitaram Raju