Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Join me for lunch!

I will be hosting a Birds-of-a-Feather Lunch at the PASS  Summit, Seattle, on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 11:30am-1:30pm.

My subject of course will be “SQL Server Compact - The little database that could”, where I will be present to discuss the small and big features of SQL Server Compact, and note any ideas, issues and feedback you have for the product. I addition, I would like to hear any wishes that you may have for the next version of SQL Compact for Tools and Programmability. I will gather your ideas and feedback and pass them on to the product team.

See you there!

Sunday, October 25, 2009

New release of ExportSqlCE SSMS add-in available

A new release of my SSMS add-in is available at CodePlex.

It adds 3 new menu items to the Table context menu in Object Explorer:

"Show Table Data" (Edit table data in DataGridView)
"Import" (Import of CSV file - generates INSERT statements)
"Rename" (table name only)

Please try it out, and provide any feedback here.

In addition, I have updated the project documentation.

Some sample screenshots below:

 

fig4

 

fig5

 

fig7

fig8

Monday, October 19, 2009

Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0 released to web!

The Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0 SDK is now available for download.

The major new features in Database Providers include (my highlights in bold)

  • New Database Providers (SQL Server and SQL Server Compact): Enable hub-and-spoke and peer-to-peer synchronization for SQL Server, SQL Server Express, and SQL Server Compact. Sync Framework automatically creates all of the commands that are required to communicate with each database. You do not have to write synchronization queries as you do with other providers. The providers support: flexible initialization options; batching of changes based on data size; and maintenance tasks, such as metadata cleanup and server database restore.
  • Robust Memory-Based Batching: Previous versions of Sync Framework and Sync Services for ADO.NET provided a way for developers to define their own batching logic but there were a lot of limitations, including significant complexity, excessive chattiness, out of memory issues, and restrictions on usage. Sync Framework 2.0 addresses all of these issues by providing a more complete and robust batching API. Developers no longer have to write batching logic themselves because Sync Framework divides changes into batches based on several properties in the API. Batches are now defined by memory consumption rather than the number of rows synchronized, which has eliminated out-of-memory issues for most common scenarios.
  • Provisioning and Management APIs: Provisioning and initialization activities that were previously exposed only through Visual Studio tooling have now been added to the database provider APIs. This includes the ability to provision an existing database by adding the change-tracking tables and triggers that are required by Sync Framework. It also includes the ability to start with an empty database, create the user schema, and provision that schema based on another server or client database that has already been provisioned.
  • Performance Improvements: The new database providers in this release have been thoroughly tested in large-scale scenarios in which a single server supports thousands of clients with hundreds of concurrent synchronization operations. This testing resulted in a large number of internal performance improvements that enable Sync Framework database providers to perform as well as other Microsoft technologies like Remote Data Access (RDA) while offering a wide range of capabilities that compete with end-to-end solutions like merge replication.

The on-line documentation has not been updated yet.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Attending PASS Summit

From Nov 2-5, 1,000s of SQL Server pros and I will be in Seattle at PASS Summit. See you there! http://summit2009.sqlpass.org