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SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition Goes Everywhere
A forthcoming Win32 upgrade to SSM joins SSE with SSX and Jet in Microsoft's new triumvirate of freely distributable database engines.
by Roger Jennings

May 1, 2006

Paul Flessner, Microsoft's Senior Vice President of Server Applications, accompanied his April 6, 2006 announcement of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 with news that SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition (SSM) will morph to a new SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition (SSE) by the end of 2006 (see Resources). SSE extends SSM's platform reach to include all Win32 systems, not just Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, by removing current SSM licensing restrictions.

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Flessner also announced that the first SSE Community Technical Preview (CTP) is scheduled for summer 2006. Steve Lasker says Microsoft plans to release the CTP at Tech•Ed 2006 (see Resources). The major contributor to the delay in releasing SSE is the need for a special Microsoft Installer configuration to handle more sophisticated setup approaches than simply copying the SSE DLLs to the application folder.

SSE will be a single-user, file-based database engine that's intended for synchronization with SQL Server 2000 SP3a or later and a lightweight local SQL data store that offers high performance, support for transactions, a simple security implementation, and data-file encryption. The SSE DLLs weigh in at only 1.4 MB. SSE has the potential to be a much more efficient and secure data store than XML for persisting DataSets locally. Roger Wolter's "SQL Server Express & Everywhere" blog post provides an overview of the types of smart-client applications for which SSE is appropriate.

Create a Master-Child Form With SSM
SSM lets you generate typed DataSets and bind data-enabled controls to TableAdapters and Binding Sources. Run this quick drill to create a Windows form with the Northwind.sdf sample SSM database file as the data source for master-child DataGridView controls:

  1. Open a new Windows Form project, choose Data, Add New Data Source to open the DataSource Configuration Wizard, select the Database icon in the Choose a Data Type dialog, and click Next to open the Choose Your Data Connection dialog.
  2. Click New Connection to open the Choose Data Source dialog, select SQL Server Mobile Edition, which selects .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server Mobile Edition as the Data Provider (see Figure 1), and click Continue to open the Add Connection dialog.
  3. Click Browse to open the Select SQL Server Mobile Edition Database File dialog. If the Northwind.sdf file isn't present, navigate to the \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SmartDevices\SDK\SQL Server\Mobile\v3.0 folder. Select Northwind.sdf and click Open to return to the Add Connection dialog (see Figure 2).
  4. Click Test Connection to verify connectivity and click OK to return to the Choose Your Data Connection dialog.
  5. Click Next and click Yes to copy Northwind.sdf to your project and fix up the connection, and then open the Save the Connection String to the Application Configuration File dialog. Click Next to open the Choose Your Database Objects dialog.
  6. Mark the Tables checkbox to add all tables to the DataSet (see Figure 3). SSM doesn't support Views (other than System Views), Stored Procedures, or Functions. Click Finish to dismiss the Wizard and add Northwind.sdf to Server Explorer's Connections node, which has Tables, System Views, and Replication subnodes.
  7. Choose Data, Show Data Sources to open the Data Sources window, and drag the Orders table icon to Form1 to add a bound DataGridView control and Orders Binding Navigator to the form.
  8. Expand the Orders table node and drag its Order Details subnode to Form1 (see Figure 4).
  9. Press F5 to build and run the project (see Figure 5). Form1 appears almost identical to that which results from applying similar steps to create a master-child form from a SQL Server or Jet database. Only the OrderID values differ from those of the SQL Server 2000 Northwind.mdf sample database.



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