Investigating the Features Supported by Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Windows CE Edition

Microsoft Structured Query Language (SQL, pronounced "se-quel" or "S-Q-L") Server 2000 Windows CE Edition (SQL Server CE) is a very tiny implementation of Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 database engine. Despite its size, SQL Server CE provides a fair amount of data storage and retrieval functionality.

SQL Server CE supports databases as large as 2GB. Binary Large Objects (BLOBS) are also supported. BLOBS can be up to 1GB in size. SQL Server CE supports a subset of the Data Definition Language (DDL) statements (see Table 7.2 for a list of supported DDL statements) and a subset of the Data Manipulation Language (DML) statements (see Table 7.3 for a list of supported DML statements). There is also support for single and multicolumn indexes, primary keys, constraints, and column defaults. Also, there is support for fast, forward-only, scrollable cursors , which are great for building applications that must perform efficiently . SQL Server CE also provides support for autonomous transactions and nested autonomous transactions. Finally, your database can also be password secured as well as encrypted with 128-bit file level encryption.

When developing a SQL Server CE application, you will need to add two assembly references to your project as well as three using (C#) or Imports (VB) statements to source code. The SQL Server CE manager exists in the System.Data.SqlServerCe assembly. You will also need to add a reference to the System.Data.Common assembly. As for the using / Imports statements, add the following lines of code to your source:

 C# using System.Data; using System.Data.Common; using System.Data.SqlServerCe; VB Imports System.Data Imports System.Data.Common Imports System.Data.SqlServerCe