Professional Visual Basic® 2008

Chapter 14. Working with SQL Server

Most of the relationship between a developer and an SQL Server relates to querying or saving data, but Visual Studio 2008 provides a couple of ways to work with databases: SQL Server Compact Edition and SQL CLR.

While Visual Basic has always included tools for working with the various editions and versions of SQL Server, Visual Studio 2008 includes a new member of the SQL Server family: SQL Server Compact Edition (SQLCE). SQLCE is a lightweight version of the database that requires minimal installation and configuration to use. It runs on both Windows and devices running Windows CE. SQLCE is particularly suited for creating local caches of a larger remote database, which may be used to improve performance when querying rarely changing tables or for the creation of partially connected solutions when working with data. In combination with various synchronization scenarios, SQLCE can provide developers with a powerful tool for enabling their applications to work both connected to the main database and offline (still storing records until the next connection).

SQL Server 2005 added integration with the .NET Framework. This provided two main benefits. First, you can use Visual Basic to create elements in the database, such as user-defined types, stored procedures, and functions. These objects may work alone or in concert with Transact-SQL objects. Second, you can expose Web services from your databases, enabling .NET and other client applications to ...