SQL Server Everywhere Blog

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