Microsoft Sql Server Compact 4.0 X64 Enu

[Marthe Bernskoetter]

Im probably missing something very obvious here, but I've been trying to get the CTP for Sql Server compact 4 to work in my asp.net mvc application. I can find next to no instruction on how to set this up or a working example application. My goal is a private install so I can just include it in my web app without having to do sql server setup on my domain hosting. This is really just me shooting the breeze and trying to figure this out. I don't plan to host a market or anything with this.

So, I've copied all the dll's that install in the base 4.0 direction (c:\Program Files\Sql Server compact\v4.0) to a lib folder in my application. I've set the copy to output direction option to 'Copy if Newer'. I then reference the System.Data.SqlServerCE dll and set 'Copy Local' to True.

I created an sdf file via Sql Studio Express. An important note is that I did not see an option for creating a CE 4.0 version of this file, so it was created using CE 3.5. I create a few tables, add a few rows to those tables, copy the *.sdf file to my App_Data directory. It's worth mentioning that, from inside VS 2008, this file never appears in my project, but it does exist in the physical location of the App_Data directory. I'm not sure why this is.

I figure from here, I'd just try getting Sql CE 3.5 to work. I upgrade my local installation of Sql CE 3.5 to sp2. I copy the dlls at the base location (c:\Program Files\Sql Server compact\v3.5), including removing and readding the version of the System.Data.SqlServerCE dll from my project references.

Guys, I really could use some direction here. I have searched stack overflow, the help docs, books online, and googled. I really haven't found anything that takes this from the very top for either CE 3.5 or 4.0 and tells me exactly what dll's to add, where to put them, how to reference them, how to add the .sdf file to my project, connect to it, and query from it. I did come across a few mentions of an IBuySpy portal sample app that was supposed to use Sql CE 3.5, but can't actually navigate the msdn download maze to get to it. Ideally, I want to setup a private deploy for CE 4.0.

I would have sworn I installed the x86 version of both versions of Sql CE (3.5/4). The installer might have gotten confused somehow because my processor is 64bit capable, but i'm running Windows xp sp 3 32 bit. The results seem to indicate it's 64 bit. Is that the case?

To date the configurations below have been tried on 2 machines. Both are Windows xp sp3 32 bit with a 64 bit capable processor. The development environment on both is VS 2008 Pro. The results on machine 2 come after a fresh install of the Sql CE 4 Ctp.

Exception Details: System.BadImageFormatException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Data.SqlServerCe.Entity' or one of its dependencies. This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the currently loaded runtime and cannot be loaded.

Reference the System.Data.SqlServerCE.dll directly from the bin folder for the code. My folly was thinking the Private folder needed to be included, but it doesn't. Do not put the System.Data.SqlServerCE.Entity.dll in the bin folder unless you are using a .net 4.0 solution. I don't think that dll works w/ 3.5.

Run corflags.exe on the assembly you copied to your references directory. What type of machine are you building for? If you're on a 64-bit machine and you're compiling to x64 or anyCpu, make sure that corflags tells you that your references are not 32-bit only references. Maybe it's "falling back" to an the wrong version in your GAC or something. If it tells you that the referenced assembly is 32-bit only, either compile your project as a 32-bit project or find a 64-bit version of the DLL?

The key for me was realizing that the version of System.Data.SqlServerCe.Entity.dll in the Private directory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition\v4.0\Private) is 4.0.0.1, where the version beneath the Desktop directory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition\v4.0\Desktop\System.Data.SqlServerCe.Entity) is 4.0.0.0. The version of System.Data.SqlServerCe.dll in the Private directory is 4.0.0.0.

I build an asp.net web api and hosted it on azure and faced some issues with sql server compact I fix it by:first remove all system.data.sqlserverce.dll and any dll use it theninstalled these tow packages :

I was all psyched about the SQL Server Compact - because I don't want the folks who would be installing my application on their computers to have to install the whole of SQL Server or something like that. I want this to be as easy as possible for the end user to install.

So I was all psyched until it seems that there are limitations to what I can do with the columns in my tables. I created a new database, created a table and when I went to create columns it seems that there isn't a "text" datatype - just something called "ntext" that seems to be limited to 255 characters. "int" seems to be limited to 4 (I wanted 11). And there doesn't seem to be an "auto_increment" feature.

Are these the real limitations I would have to live with? (Or is it because I'm using "Express" and not "Standard"). If these are the real limitations, what are my other database options that meet my requirements? (easy installation for user being the biggie - I'm assuming that my end user is just an average user of computers and if it's complicated would get frustrated with my application)

As for the rest of it:

"Text" and "auto_increment" remind me of Access. SQL Server Compact is supposed to be upgrade compatible to the server editions of SQL Server, in that queries and tables used in your compact database should transfer to a full database without modification. With that in mind, you should first look at the SQL Server types and names rather than Access names: in this case namely varchar(max), bigint, and identity columns.

Unfortunately, you'll notice this fails with respect to varchar(max), because Compact Edition doesn't yet have the varchar(max) type. Hopefully they'll fix that soon. However, the ntext type you were looking at supports many more than 255 bytes: 230 in fact, which amounts to more than 500 million characters.

Finally, bigint uses 8 bytes for storage. You asked for 11. However, I think you may be confused here that the storage size indicates the number of decimal digits available. This is definitely NOT the case. 8 bytes of storage allows for values up to 264, which will accomodate many more than 11 digits. If you have that many items you probably want a server-class database anyway. If you really want to think in terms of digits, there is a numeric type provided as well.

1st - do not use SQLite unless you like having to have the entire database locked during writes ( ) and perhaps more importantly in a .Net application it is NOT thread safe or more to the point it must be recompiled to support threads ( )

You may be able to hide the key well enough that the effort to recover it isn't worth the value of the information. Windows has some neat machine and user local encryption routines to help. But if your design has a strong requirement that a user never find data you have hidden on their computer (but your program will) you need to redesign -- that guarentee simply cannot be accomplished.

SQL CE is a puzzle to me. Did we really need yet another different SQL database platform? And it's the third in the last several years targeted at mobile platforms from MS ... I wouldn't have a lot of confidence that it will be the final one. It doesn't share much if any technology with SQL Server - it's a new one from scratch as far as I can tell.

Automatically incrementing columns in the SQL Server world are done using the IDENTITY keyword. This causes the value of the column to be automatically determined by SQL Server when inserting data into a row, preventing collisions with any other rows.

I've used the various SQL Server Compact editions on a few occasions, but only ever as data capture repositories on mobile platforms - where it works well for syncing with a server database, and with that sort of scenario is undoubtedly the optional choice.

However if you need something to do more than that and act as a primary database to your application then I'd suggest SQLLite is probably the better option, it's completely solid, widely supported and found in all sorts of places (used on the iPhone for example) but is surprisingly capable (The Virtual Reality simulator OpenSim uses it as it's default database) and there are lots of others (including Microsoft).

And yes the post above is correct in that you have to look at the SQL Server types to really match them up, VistaDB also uses the SQL Server types (we actually support more than SQL CE does; only missing XML).

According to this post ( -development/microsoft-webmatrix-the-dawn-of-a-new-era/) it says that because it uses a database file, only one process can access it for every read/write and as a result it needs exclusive access to the file, also it is limited to 256 connections and the whole file will most likely have to be loaded in memory. So SQL server compact might not be good for your site when it grows.

Is it possible to connect to a SQL server compact, for accessing an embedded database living in an .sdf file?So far I haven't seen any options to do that.Or maybe even easier, is it possible to tell HeidiSQL where my .sdf file is so I don't need to set up a server on my PC. I know this last option is available in the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio version 2008

There has been quite a lot of interest building up recently around SQL Compact 4. Now, if you are not familiar with SQL compact, it's basically a database engine that is free and totally embedded. You don't need to install a database anywhere on your server. Not only that, but it works with existing .NET based data API's (Entity Framework, NHibernate). Another great advantage of using a SQL CE database is that it is totally file based and you can store your database files within the \App_data folder of your web application. So, for someone like me who is running a simple blog that doesn't really require a massive DB, this is really ideal. If you use shared hosting services and you need to use SQL Compact - no problem, it runs under medium trust which means it works perfectly.

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