Best Practice Configuring Visual Studio Solution For .SDF Databases

Hello,



In our company we haven't tamed Visual Studio yet for the part of configuring
the application database. Therefore I was wondering if there is someone that
can give me hints or clues on what the best practice is for configuring Visual
Solution to handle an SDF database (SQLCE 3.0). I have search a bit on the
internet and this forum, but couldn't find a decent how-to or best practices
guide that copes with this specific problem.

As
a matter of facts, i am also curious for guidelines and tips on the best way to
configure and manage SQL Server databases under Visual Studio. I guess (read as
hope) that the configuration of a mobile and full blown
database will have some overlaps somehow.



I've found the Database Project which with to manage (Create/Alter) databases,
but is this also the best way to store versions of the database in an
source repository? Can such a project allow me to 'automagically' have a
correct database (so with tables and data) when i want to deploy or debug my
device application?

I am asking this because now our database designers and software engineers have
to do allot of manual actions to update the application with the most recent
database version. SDF databases are flying around all over the place, and in
order to test a specific version of the application, the related database has
to be copied manually on the device. We are not searching for replication
related solutions, nor adding the SDF itself to the source repository, but because
most of our applications are server-client based, it would be really super cool
if we could somehow couple both database definitions and generation together. My
feeling says me there ought to be some feature embedded somewhere deep into
Visual Studio that we missed that would (partially) simplify and automate this
whole process for us.

Another
related question is if it is possible to couple XSD generated datasets to an
SDF database. Is it possible to update the generated code (or the describing
XSD documents) from an SDF database? i again guess that this somehow should be
possible in oderder to keep both code and data in sync, and i do not like the
alternative to always update the XSD when the SDF architecture changes. Somehow
i cannot find out how to do this. i was initially searching for the other way
around: Use an XSD to generate both the DataSet codewrappers and the database
itself.

Any
information is welcome and many thanks in advance!

Peter
Vrenken