SQL Compact 3.5 RTM available for download

The standalone components of SQL Compact 3.5 are now available for download. These components allows you to use and develop solutions based on SQL Compact 3.5 and ADO.NET Sync Services 1.0 without requiring Visual Studio 2008.

Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 and Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.Net v1.0 for Windows Desktop

Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 for Windows Mobile

Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 Books Online and Samples

Update 30-11-2007:
Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 Server Tools

The "SQL Compact Server Tools" download does not appear to be available yet.

No sign of the "Data Migration Wizard", or reference to same in Books OnLine.

No sign of the Windows CE 6.0 cab files either...

Update:
The Windows CE 6.0 cab files are in the wce500 folder! From 3.5 Books OnLine: "Note   The CAB files and DLL files under the folder %Program Files%\Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition\v3.5\Devices\wce500 are also used to install SQL Server Compact 3.5 on Windows CE 6.0 and Windows Mobile 6.0 devices."

The file version of all the SQL Compact files in the web downloads are: 3.5.5386.0

The contents of %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition\v3.5 after installation of these downloads:

SQL Compact 3.5 query analyzer

The query analyzer and the other SQL Compact tools (also included in the Visual Studio 2008 Server Explorer) that are included with SQL Server Management Studio are now available for SQL Compact 3.5 with the latest SQL Server 2008 CTP. It does not appear that Intellisense is available for SQL Compact, but this is only a CTP, of course. 

The readme file for the SQL Server November CTP contains this information relating to Merge replication and SQL Compact 3.5:

"4.1.14 Replicating Columns That Contain the New Data Types to SQL Server Compact Is Not Supported

You cannot currently replicate to SQL Server Compact any columns that contain the new data types in SQL Server 2008. The new data types are as follows:

• date
• datetime2
• datetimeoffset
• FILESTREAM attribute
• geography and geometry
• hierarchyid
• time

Replication will fail even if you use article schema options or the publication compatibility level to specify that these data types should be mapped to data types that are supported by SQL Server Compact. You can replicate tables that contain columns with the new data types by filtering out these columns. For more information about filtering, see SQL Server Books Online."

Let us hope that some of these new data types (in particular the date/time types) will be supported in an upcoming version of SQL Compact.

SQL Compact 3.5 has been released to web

Visual Studio 2008 has been released to web for all MSDN subscribers at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/default.aspx

VS 2008 includes SQL Compact 3.5 in various contexts, as “Local Database”, and as an ADO.NET Sync Services 1.0 “Local Data Cache”.

VS 2008 allows desktop development using SQL Compact with all editions of VS 2008, including the free Express edition.

For device development with SQL Compact 3.5, VS 2008 Standard or higher must be used.

For an overview of the new features of SQL Compact, see other entries in this blog, and this post from the SQL Compact team:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlservercompact/archive/2007/08/30/sql-server-compact-3-5-beta-2-downloads.aspx