Toss Me a Bone Honey....
I have been told by a friend that my use of this expression is getting kinda old. So I will have to give it up. (I am sure that I will pick up something new in Tunisia or Spain.) Before I do that, I am going to use it one last time.
So my company has a Pocket PC (SDE/CF) application that uses a local SQL Server CE on the device with Merge Replication back with an enterprise SQL Server Publication. I have lots of experience making this work, and it works well. I wont bash the Microsoft SQL Server CE, .NET CF, SDE teams at all.
My problem is that at the office I have this all set up properly. We have a dedicated SQL Server production box and a dedicated IIS box. Life is good. Where things go bad is that I hired a developer who knows nothing about SQL Server CE, SDE, CF, etc, so I am setting up a local sandbox for him to play with while I am in Tunisia and Spain. My goal is to give him the TechEd lab demos created by Kevin Collins, myself and others over the years. Setting up merge replication with a backend SQL Server to a device is pretty easy. The steps are as follows:
Dim ceRep As New SqlCeReplication
With ceRep
.Publisher = "KILIMANJARO"
.PublisherDatabase = "BYA_Data"
.PublisherLogin = "sa"
.PublisherPassword = ""
.Publication = "BYA_Data_CE"
.Subscriber = "SQLCENETCFLab"
.SubscriberConnectionString = _ "Provider=Microsoft.SQLServer.OLEDB.CE.2.0;Data Source=\my documents\mycooldatabase.sdf"
.InternetUrl = "http://KILIMANJARO/SSCE_DLL/sscesa20.dll"
'Bring down initial subscription
.Synchronize()
End With
So I have done this a zillion times, install Visual Studio on the development machine along with the SQL Server CE development tools and I am off to the races. This part of course went smooth, except for the fact that I want to sandbox the machine and run everything off it all at once. So I have to make sure IIS 5.0 and SQL Server standard or enterprise is running. Simple you say, just install the SQL Server CE server tools as well on the same machine. The problem is that it took me about two hours to set this up (I have done this a hundred times in less than 15 minutes) because of SERVICE PACK HELL. Basically the server tools would not install since the IIS and SQL Server service packs were too current for the installer on my machine. I did not have to roll back the SPs (that is good!), but I had to dig around and find new installs from Microsoft.
So Microsoft, please TOSS ME A FRIGGIN BONE here. Get rid of all of the old install drops and just require SQL Server SP3 to install anything-or create a better error message! I am not asking for much. This is such great technology, I dont want people to be discouraged from using it due to poor locations of downloads.
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Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.