SQL Server Compact 4.0 Tooling in Visual Studio 2010

I developed a program which uses SQL Server Compact. Initially it was developed creating SQL Server COmpact 4.0 databases. Now after reinstalling my laptop, I tried to open the database, but it appaered I was missing the necessary tooling for SQL Server Compact 4.0, I could only open/create SQL Server Compact 3.5 databases.

I've immediatly installed the SQL Server Compact 4.0 runtime, which can be found here.
But this however didn't seem to be enough... I still couldn't open my created SQL compact database.

What I needed to do, was install some additional software using Microsoft Web Platform Installer 3.0.
Make sure you install these packages:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1
• Microsoft Visual Studion 2010 SP1 Tools for SQL Server Compact 4.0

Note that selecting and installing the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 or the Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1 also installs the SQL Server Compact 4.0 components that are needed for the tooling support. These components are called as Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Tools for SQL Server Compact 4.0 and SQL Server Compact 4.0. The Web Platform Installer automatically detects whether these components are already installed on the machine, and if they are not installed, the Web Platform Installer will install them. There is no need to separately select the SQL Server Compact 4.0 components in the Web Platform Installer.

The installer for visual studio SP1 can also be found here.

Microsoft Lightswitch coming on July 26

Microsoft’s LightSwitch to Launch on July 26. This program will give developers a simpler and faster way to create high-quality business applications for the desktop and the cloud. LightSwitch is a new addition to the Visual Studio family.

I've already been playing with Lightswitch some time ago + I've seen the presentation on Techdays 2011 in Belgium. The new Visual Studio addition definitely has some promising features, and is easy to use. It could get quite handy for some (smaller) projects.

Lightswitch makes sure you'll get a working program fast with pre-configured screen templates, prewritten code and other reusable components to handle routine application tasks, along with helpful step-by-step guidance.

And afterwards you can of course customize it all in Visual Basic .NET or C#. To finalize, you can deploy to the desktop, browser, or cloud to share your application with others more easily without the cumbersome installation processes.

More info: Lightswitch, a developers tool, will launch on July 26
Videos and tutorials: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/lightswitch

interesting vids

I've been to the Microsoft Techdays a few weeks ago.It's been an amazing experience and learned some new things.

Too bad though that some interesting sessions took place on the exact same moment. So I could only follow one of them.
Luckily however, they announced that all sessions would be recorded and placed on the channel 9 web site to view later.

Well, I'm still waiting for those sessions to appear on the website...
I've found some other Microsoft technology event sessions of this year that were on channel 9 already. So for now, I won't have any evenings not knowing what to do :).

Devdays 2011 Netherlands

MIX 2011 Las Vegas

techdays 2011 Belgium (only developer keynote on line yet)

Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Released

Service Pack 1 for Visual studio is now released. Preliminary support is added for HTML5, the IntelliSense also nows all html5 tags.
Other new features in this SP1 for Visual Studio 2010 can be found here

download: Download details: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 (Installer)

Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

MSDN subscribers can already download SP1 for Visual Studio 2010.
On March 10, it will be generally available.

Source: Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 - Jason Zander's WebLog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs