Sunday, July 3, 2011 12:52 PM
One thing that’s really got me pumped about the Mango OS update is the inclusion of SQL Compact baked right in. We don’t need to include extra assemblies to get database functionality for our apps, as SQL Compact is a native component in Mango!
Before we get all excited thinking we’ll have a full on visual designer experience when developing our apps, realize that this is still an isolate storage based data file that you’ll be using LINQ to SQL to access. There’s no visual designer (yet), which means you have to create the database through code.
There’s already been some great articles posted, and I wanted to start a post to capture them.
Over at WindowsPhoneGeek, they’ve started the first in a long series doing a soup-to-nuts review of the functionality. You can check that one out here.
Remember what I mentioned about having to create the database through code? WindowsPhoneGeek also has a great article on how to leverage SQLMetal (a command line tool) to auto-generate the database for you (or at least the classes required to create it). You can read about that here.
Alex Golesh has also written a blog post on the above subjects, which you can read here.
I’ll add more as I find them, and possibly a few of my own posts on experiences using SQL in my WP7 apps.
Update – July 3, 2pm
MSDN documentation on Local DB Connection Strings for Windows Phone
How To:Create a Basic Local Database Application for Windows Phone
How To: Deploy a Reference Database with a Windows Phone Application
How To: Use the Isolated Storage Explorer Tool
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