Sunday, December 02, 2007

Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 Available

As released with Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server Compact 3.5 is now available in RTM. It is free to use as long as you're not using any type of replication or RDA (remote data access) with a back office SQL Server. Get it here.

SQL Server Compact 3.5 runs side-by-side with SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition (3.0/3.1).

Notice the name change, again ;)

SQL Server 3.5 contains some enhancements such as:

  1. Timestamp datatype - at last! ;)
  2. Transact-SQL enhancements such as:
    1. Nested query in FROM clause
    2. CROSS APPLY and OUTTER APPLY
    3. CASE and DECIMAL
    4. SET IDENTITY INSERT
    5. TOP


SQL Server Compact 3.5 runs under the .NET Compact Framework 2.0. So although it was released at the same time as Visual Studio 2008 and with Visual Studio 2008, you don't actually need VS 2008 or the .NET CF 3.5 to use it. You can use it within your Visual Studio 2005 projects today if you want to.

Read about all the new features here.

This release is supported on Pocket PC 2003 as well as the later devices, WM5, WM6.

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