SQL Mobile and MSDE

[Wiredless]

Hi,



I' am trying to determine if i should use CF 1.x with SQL CE 2.0 and MSDE for a new application or CF 2.0 with SQL Mobile and MSDE. I have been told that I cannot use merge replication with SQL Mobile and MSDE. So, I will need to create my own custom DB synchronization system. I was told that the solution MUST use MSDE since the client already has an application using this but with laptop computers. They want to have both the laptop solution and pocket pc solution.



With that said I have a few questions that should help me decide.



I heard from microsoft that CF 2.0 is not really beta that it is really a final product. Is this also true for Sql Mobile under beta 2?



Is there a "Go Live" license for VS 2005 Beta 2 that will allow me to deploy the system for internal sales force use?



Do you know of any replication/synchronization solutions that currently support SQL Mobile to MSDE on a notebook?



Just as MSDE is the desktop version of SQL Server 2003 is there a desktop version of SQL Server 2005 (MSDE 2005) ?



If there is a MSDE 2005 will it work with SQL Mobile for replication and synchronization?



Also, any advice on the best synchronization model for a 3 tierd sync system. in other words. I have a server a laptop and pocket pc. I can either sync the pda to the laptop and the the laptop to the server or I can sync the laptop to the server and the pda to the server. I thought it would be best to sync the pda to the laptop then the laptop to the server this way the pda will sync to the laptop which will have a subset of the rows in the various tables. Otherwise the pda will sync to the larger tables on the server which seem like a slower and possible more complex task.



Sorry for so many question. Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Thanks

 

[Guest]

If the server is running SQL Server then I would sync the PDA to the server
with RDA and sync the laptop to the server. That takes MSDE out of the PDA
equasion. You may have to write some conflict resolvers depending on the
usage case.

 

[Wiredless]

The backend is Oracle

Can i do merge replication from PDA (SQL Mobile) to Oracle?

 

[Guest]

For Oracle take a look at Odyssey Softwares CEFusion. It requires a per
client licence but is an exelent solution. With the compact framework you
may also need to run CFCom also by Odyssey. Odyssey will provide a license
for CFCom that will work just with CEFusion for no additional cost but the
com interop layer will slow you down.
Another solution is to pass the data down in comma delimited flat files with
single quote delimiters and append those strings to INSERT INTO commands in
SQL language strings passed to SQL Server CE using the command statement.
This seems like a brute force method but it may out-perform CEFusion with the
com interop and it is a royalty free solution.

I have not tried RDA with MSDE, I don't know if it works but I know of no
reason why it wouldn't.

 

[Nino Benvenuti]

No, not "out of the box". A product such as Odyssey's CEFusion[1] may
be helpful, but it utilizes a different model for data synchronization.

The only fully supported Oracle synchronization solution I know of is
use to Oracle Lite (instead of SQL CE) on the device. Otherwise, you are
looking at rolling your own synchronization / conflict resolution
solution. I have seen this done before, putting ASP.NET Web Services in
front of Oracle.

hth,
Nino

[1]http://www.odysseysoftware.com/cefusion_overview.asp

 

[Dick Grier]

You may want to take a look at SqlLinkCE it may do what you need:
http://www.gui-innovations.com

Dick

--
Richard Grier (Microsoft Visual Basic MVP)

See www.hardandsoftware.net for contact information.

Author of Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications, 4th
Edition ISBN 1-890422-28-2 (391 pages) published July 2004. See
www.mabry.com/vbpgser4 to order.