Last month we released
the Beta of VS 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1). You can learn more about
the VS 2010 SP1 Beta from Jason Zander’s two blog posts about it, and from Scott Hanselman’s blog post that covers some of
the new capabilities enabled with it. You can download and install
the VS 2010 SP1 Beta here. Last week I blogged about
the new Visual Studio support for IIS Express that we are adding with VS 2010 SP1. In today’s post I’m going to talk about
the new VS 2010 SP1 tooling support for SQL CE, and walkthrough some of
the cool scenarios it enables. SQL CE – What is it and why should you care? SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. No Database Installation Required SQL CE does not require you to run a setup or install a database server in order to use it. You can simply copy
the SQL CE binaries into
the \bin directory of your ASP.NET application, and then your web application can use it as a database engine. No setup or extra security permissions are required for it to run. You do not need to have an administrator account on
the machine. Just copy your web application onto any server and it will work. This is true even of medium-trust applications running in a web hosting environment. SQL CE runs in-memory within your ASP.NET application and will start-up when you first access a SQL CE database, and will automatically shutdown when your application is unloaded. SQL CE databases are stored as files that live within
the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Applications. Works with Existing Data APIs SQL CE 4 works with existing .NET-based data APIs, and supports a SQL Server compatible query syntax. This means you can use existing data APIs like ADO.NET, as well as use higher-level ORMs like Entity Framework and NHibernate with SQL CE. This enables you to use
the same data programming skills and data APIs you know today. Supports Development, Testing and Production Scenarios SQL CE can be used for development scenarios, testing scenarios, and light production usage scenarios. With
the SQL CE 4 release we’ve done
the engineering work to ensure that SQL CE won’t crash or deadlock when used in a multi-threaded server scenario (like ASP.NET). This is a big change from previous releases of SQL CE – which were designed for client-only scenarios and which explicitly blocked running in web-server environments. Starting with SQL CE 4 you can use it in a web-server as well. There are no license restrictions with SQL CE. It is also totally free. Easy Migration to SQL Server SQL CE is an embedded database – which makes it ideal for development, testing, and light-usage scenarios. For high-volume sites and applications you’ll probably want to migrate your database to use SQL Server Express (which is free), SQL Server or SQL Azure. These servers enable much better scalability, more development features (including features like Stored Procedures – which aren’t supported with SQL CE), as well as more advanced data management capabilities. We’ll ship migration tools that enable you to optionally take SQL CE databases and easily upgrade them to use SQL Server Express, SQL Server, or SQL Azure. You will not need to change your code when upgrading a SQL CE database to SQL Server or SQL Azure. Our goal is to enable you to be able to simply change
the database connection string in your web.config file and have your application just work. New Tooling Support for SQL CE in VS 2010 SP1 VS 2010 SP1 includes much improved tooling support for SQL CE, and adds support for using SQL CE within ASP.NET projects for
the first time. With VS 2010 SP1 you can now: Create new SQL CE Databases Edit and Modify SQL CE Database Schema and Indexes Populate SQL CE Databases within Data Use
the Entity Framework (EF) designer to create model layers against SQL CE databases Use EF Code First to define model layers in code, then create a SQL CE database from them, and optionally edit
the DB with VS Deploy SQL CE databases to remote servers using Web Deploy and optionally convert them to full SQL Server databases You can take advantage of all of
the above features from within both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based projects. Download You can enable SQL CE tooling support within VS 2010 by first installing VS 2010 SP1 (beta). Once SP1 is installed, you’ll also then need to install
the SQL CE Tools for Visual Studio download. This is a separate download that enables
the SQL CE tooling support for VS 2010 SP1. Walkthrough of Two Scenarios In this blog post I’m going to walkthrough how you can take advantage of SQL CE and VS 2010 SP1 using both an ASP.NET Web Forms and an ASP.NET MVC based application. Specifically, we’ll walkthrough: How to create a SQL CE database using VS 2010 SP1, then use
the EF4 visual designers in Visual Studio to construct a model layer from it, and then display and edit
the data using an ASP.NET GridView control. How to use an EF Code First approach to define a model layer using POCO classes and then have EF Code-First “auto-create” a SQL CE database for us based on our model classes. We’ll then look at how we can use
the new VS 2010 SP1 support for SQL CE to inspect
the database that was created, populate it with data, and later make schema changes to it. We’ll do all this within
the context of an ASP.NET MVC based application. You can follow
the two walkthroughs below on your own machine by installing VS 2010 SP1 (beta) and then installing
the SQL CE Tools for Visual Studio download (which is a separate download that enables SQL CE tooling support for VS 2010 SP1). Walkthrough 1: Create a SQL CE Database, Create EF Model Classes, Edit
the Data with a GridView This first walkthrough will demonstrate how to create and define a SQL CE database within an ASP.NET Web Form application. We’ll then build an EF model layer for it and use that model layer to enable data editing scenarios with an <asp:GridView> control. Step 1: Create a new ASP.NET Web Forms Project We’ll begin by using
the File->New Project menu command within Visual Studio to create a new ASP.NET Web Forms project. We’ll use
the “ASP.NET Web Application” project template option so that it has a default UI skin implemented: Step 2: Create a SQL CE Database Right click on
the “App_Data” folder within
the created project and choose
the “Add->New Item” menu command: This will bring up
the “Add Item” dialog box. Select
the “SQL Server Compact 4.0 Local Database” item (new in VS 2010 SP1) and name
the database file to create “Store.sdf”: Note that SQL CE database files have a .sdf filename extension. Place them within
the /App_Data folder of your ASP.NET application to enable easy deployment. When we clicked
the “Add” button above a Store.sdf file was added to our project: Step 3: Adding a “Products” Table Double-clicking
the “Store.sdf” database file will open it up within
the Server Explorer tab. Since it is a new database there are no tables within it: Right click on
the “Tables” icon and choose
the “Create Table” menu command to create a new database table. We’ll name
the new table “Products” and add 4 columns to it. We’ll mark
the first column as a primary key (and make it an identify column so that its value will automatically increment with each new row): When we click “ok” our new Products table will be created in
the SQL CE database. Step 4: Populate with Data Once our Products table is created it will show up within
the Server Explorer. We can right-click it and choose
the “Show Table Data” menu command to edit its data: Let’s add a few sample rows of data to it: Step 5: Create an EF Model Layer We have a SQL CE database with some data in it – let’s now create an EF Model Layer that will provide a way for us to easily query and update data within it. Let’s right-click on our project and choose
the “Add->New Item” menu command. This will bring up
the “Add New Item” dialog – select
the “ADO.NET Entity Data Model” item within it and name it “Store.edmx” This will add a new Store.edmx item to our solution explorer and launch a wizard that allows us to quickly create an EF model: Select
the “Generate From Database” option above and click next. Choose to use
the Store.sdf SQL CE database we just created and then click next again.
The wizard will then ask you what database objects you want to import into your model. Let’s choose to import
the “Products” table we created earlier: When we click
the “Finish” button Visual Studio will open up
the EF designer. It will have a Product entity already on it that maps to
the “Products” table within our SQL CE database:
The VS 2010 SP1 EF designer works exactly
the same with SQL CE as it does already with SQL Server and SQL Express.
The Product entity above will be persisted as a class (called “Product”) that we can programmatically work against within our ASP.NET application. Step 6: Compile
the Project Before using your model layer you’ll need to build your project. Do a Ctrl+Shift+B to compile
the project, or use
the Build->Build Solution menu command. Step 7: Create a Page that Uses our EF Model Layer Let’s now create a simple ASP.NET Web Form that contains a GridView control that we can use to display and edit
the our Products data (via
the EF Model Layer we just created). Right-click on
the project and choose
the Add->New Item command. Select
the “Web Form from Master Page” item template, and name
the page you create “Products.aspx”. Base
the master page on
the “Site.Master” template that is in
the root of
the project. Add an <h2>Products</h2> heading
the new Page, and add an <asp:gridview> control within it: Then click
the “Design” tab to switch into design-view. Select
the GridView control, and then click
the top-right corner to display
the GridView’s “Smart Tasks” UI: Choose
the “New data source…” drop down option above. This will bring up
the below dialog which allows you to pick your Data Source type: Select
the “Entity” data source option – which will allow us to easily connect our GridView to
the EF model layer we created earlier. This will bring up another dialog that allows us to pick our model layer: Select
the “StoreEntities” option in
the dropdown – which is
the EF model layer we created earlier. Then click next – which will allow us to pick which entity within it we want to bind to: Select
the “Products” entity in
the above dialog – which indicates that we want to bind against
the “Product” entity class we defined earlier. Then click
the “Enable automatic updates” checkbox to ensure that we can both query and update Products. When you click “Finish” VS will wire-up an <asp:EntityDataSource> to your <asp:GridView> control:
The last two steps we’ll do will be to click
the “Enable Editing” checkbox on
the Grid (which will cause
the Grid to display an “Edit” link on each row) and (optionally) use
the Auto Format dialog to pick a UI template for
the Grid. Step 8: Run
the Application Let’s now run our application and browse to
the /Products.aspx page that contains our GridView. When we do so we’ll see a Grid UI of
the Products within our SQL CE database. Clicking
the “Edit” link for any of
the rows will allow us to edit their values: When we click “Update”
the GridView will post back
the values, persist them through our EF Model Layer, and ultimately
save them within our SQL CE database. Learn More about using EF with ASP.NET Web Forms Read this tutorial series on
the http://asp.net site to learn more about how to use EF with ASP.NET Web Forms.
The tutorial series uses SQL Express as
the database – but
the nice thing is that all of
the same steps/concepts can also now also be done with SQL CE. Walkthrough 2: Using EF Code-First with SQL CE and ASP.NET MVC 3 We used a database-first approach with
the sample above – where we first created
the database, and then used
the EF designer to create model classes from
the database. In addition to supporting a designer-based development workflow, EF also enables a more code-centric option which we call “code first development”. Code-First Development enables a pretty sweet development workflow. It enables you to: Define your model objects by simply writing “plain old classes” with no base classes or visual designer required Use a “convention over configuration” approach that enables database persistence without explicitly configuring anything Optionally override
the convention-based persistence and use a fluent code API to fully customize
the persistence mapping Optionally auto-create a database based on
the model classes you define – allowing you to start from code first I’ve done several blog posts about EF Code First in
the past – I really think it is great.
The good news is that it also works very well with SQL CE.
The combination of SQL CE, EF Code First, and
the new VS tooling support for SQL CE, enables a pretty nice workflow. Below is a simple example of how you can use them to build a simple ASP.NET MVC 3 application. Step 1: Create a new ASP.NET MVC 3 Project We’ll begin by using
the File->New Project menu command within Visual Studio to create a new ASP.NET MVC 3 project. We’ll use
the “Internet Project” template so that it has a default UI skin implemented: Step 2: Use NuGet to Install EFCodeFirst Next we’ll use
the NuGet package manager (automatically installed by ASP.NET MVC 3) to add
the EFCodeFirst library to our project. We’ll use
the Package Manager command shell to do this. Bring up
the package manager console within Visual Studio by selecting
the View->Other Windows->Package Manager Console menu command. Then type: install-package EFCodeFirst within
the package manager console to download
the EFCodeFirst library and have it be added to our project: When we enter
the above command,
the EFCodeFirst library will be downloaded and added to our application: Step 3: Build Some Model Classes Using a “code first” based development workflow, we will create our model classes first (even before we have a database). We create these model classes by writing code. For this sample, we will right click on
the “Models” folder of our project and add
the below three classes to our project:
The “Dinner” and “RSVP” model classes above are “plain old CLR objects” (aka POCO). They do not need to derive from any base classes or implement any interfaces, and
the properties they expose are standard .NET data-types. No data persistence attributes or data code has been added to them.
The “NerdDinners” class derives from
the DbContext class (which is supplied by EFCodeFirst) and handles
the retrieval/persistence of our Dinner and RSVP instances from a database. Step 4: Listing Dinners We’ve written all of
the code necessary to implement our model layer for this simple project. Let’s now expose and implement
the URL: /Dinners/Upcoming within our project. We’ll use it to list upcoming dinners that happen in
the future. We’ll do this by right-clicking on our “Controllers” folder and select
the “Add->Controller” menu command. We’ll name
the Controller we want to create “DinnersController”. We’ll then implement an “Upcoming” action method within it that lists upcoming dinners using our model layer above. We will use a LINQ query to retrieve
the data and pass it to a View to render with
the code below: We’ll then right-click within our Upcoming method and choose
the “Add-View” menu command to create an “Upcoming” view template that displays our dinners. We’ll use
the “empty” template option within
the “Add View” dialog and write
the below view template using Razor: Step 4: Configure our Project to use a SQL CE Database We have finished writing all of our code – our last step will be to configure a database connection-string to use. We will point our NerdDinners model class to a SQL CE database by adding
the below <connectionString> to
the web.config file at
the top of our project: EF Code First uses a default convention where context classes will look for a connection-string that matches
the DbContext class name. Because we created a “NerdDinners” class earlier, we’ve also named our connectionstring “NerdDinners”. Above we are configuring our connection-string to use SQL CE as
the database, and telling it that our SQL CE database file will live within
the \App_Data directory of our ASP.NET project. Step 5: Running our Application Now that we’ve built our application, let’s run it! We’ll browse to
the /Dinners/Upcoming URL – doing so will display an empty list of upcoming dinners: You might ask – but where did it query to get
the dinners from? We didn’t explicitly create a database?!? One of
the cool features that EF Code-First supports is
the ability to automatically create a database (based on
the schema of our model classes) when
the database we point it at doesn’t exist. Above we configured EF Code-First to point at a SQL CE database in
the \App_Data\ directory of our project. When we ran our application, EF Code-First saw that
the SQL CE database didn’t exist and automatically created it for us. Step 6: Using VS 2010 SP1 to Explore our newly created SQL CE Database Click
the “Show all Files” icon within
the Solution Explorer and you’ll see
the “NerdDinners.sdf” SQL CE database file that was automatically created for us by EF code-first within
the \App_Data\ folder: We can optionally right-click on
the file and “Include in Project" to add it to our solution: We can also double-click
the file (regardless of whether it is added to
the project) and VS 2010 SP1 will open it as a database we can edit within
the “Server Explorer” tab of
the IDE. Below is
the view we get when we double-click our NerdDinners.sdf SQL CE file. We can drill in to see
the schema of
the Dinners and RSVPs tables in
the tree explorer. Notice how two tables - Dinners and RSVPs – were automatically created for us within our SQL CE database. This was done by EF Code First when we accessed
the NerdDinners class by running our application above: We can right-click on a Table and use
the “Show Table Data” command to enter some upcoming dinners in our database: We’ll use
the built-in editor that VS 2010 SP1 supports to populate our table data below: And now when we hit “refresh” on
the /Dinners/Upcoming URL within our browser we’ll see some upcoming dinners show up: Step 7: Changing our Model and Database Schema Let’s now modify
the schema of our model layer and database, and walkthrough one way that
the new VS 2010 SP1 Tooling support for SQL CE can make this easier. With EF Code-First you typically start making database changes by modifying
the model classes. For example, let’s add an additional string property called “UrlLink” to our “Dinner” class. We’ll use this to point to a link for more information about
the event: Now when we re-run our project, and visit
the /Dinners/Upcoming URL we’ll see an error thrown: We are seeing this error because EF Code-First automatically created our database, and by default when it does this it adds a table that helps tracks whether
the schema of our database is in sync with our model classes. EF Code-First helpfully throws an error when they become out of sync – making it easier to track down issues at development time that you might otherwise only find (via obscure errors) at runtime. Note that if you do not want this feature you can turn it off by changing
the default conventions of your DbContext class (in this case our NerdDinners class) to not track
the schema version. Our model classes and database schema are out of sync in
the above example – so how do we fix this? There are two approaches you can use today: Delete
the database and have EF Code First automatically re-create
the database based on
the new model class schema (losing
the data within
the existing DB) Modify
the schema of
the existing database to make it in sync with
the model classes (keeping/migrating
the data within
the existing DB) There are a couple of ways you can do
the second approach above. Below I’m going to show how you can take advantage of
the new VS 2010 SP1 Tooling support for SQL CE to use a database schema tool to modify our database structure. We are also going to be supporting a “migrations” feature with EF in
the future that will allow you to automate/script database schema migrations programmatically. Step 8: Modify our SQL CE Database Schema using VS 2010 SP1
The new SQL CE Tooling support within VS 2010 SP1 makes it easy to modify
the schema of our existing SQL CE database. To do this we’ll right-click on our “Dinners” table and choose
the “Edit Table Schema” command: This will bring up
the below “Edit Table” dialog. We can rename, change or delete any of
the existing columns in our table, or click at
the bottom of
the column listing and type to add a new column. Below I’ve added a new “UrlLink” column of type “nvarchar” (since our property is a string): When we click ok our database will be updated to have
the new column and our schema will now match our model classes. Because we are manually modifying our database schema, there is one additional step we need to take to let EF Code-First know that
the database schema is in sync with our model classes. As i mentioned earlier, when a database is automatically created by EF Code-First it adds a “EdmMetadata” table to
the database to track schema versions (and hash our model classes against them to detect mismatches between our model classes and
the database schema): Since we are manually updating and maintaining our database schema, we don’t need this table – and can just delete it: This will leave us with just
the two tables that correspond to our model classes: And now when we re-run our /Dinners/Upcoming URL it will display
the dinners correctly: One last touch we could do would be to update our view to check for
the new UrlLink property and render a <a> link to it if an event has one: And now when we refresh our /Dinners/Upcoming we will see hyperlinks for
the events that have a UrlLink stored in
the database: Summary SQL CE provides a free, embedded, database engine that you can use to easily enable database storage. With SQL CE 4 you can now take advantage of it within ASP.NET projects and applications (both Web Forms and MVC). VS 2010 SP1 provides tooling support that enables you to easily create, edit and modify SQL CE databases – as well as use
the standard EF designer against them. This allows you to re-use your existing skills and data knowledge while taking advantage of an embedded database option. This is useful both for small applications (where you don’t need
the scalability of a full SQL Server), as well as for development and testing scenarios – where you want to be able to rapidly develop/test your application without having a full database instance. SQL CE makes it easy to later migrate your data to a full SQL Server or SQL Azure instance if you want to – without having to change any code in your application. All we would need to change in
the above two scenarios is
the <connectionString> value within
the web.config file in order to have our code run against a full SQL Server. This provides
the flexibility to scale up your application starting from a small embedded database solution as needed. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu
