Recently at work, I encountered a problem with SQL CE 2.0, for some reason I wasn't able to insert data to this mobile datastore. Exception thrown by the application said nothing more than "SQL CE exception has occurred". Well there can be various reasons why this would occur, one of them being database in use, as SQL Ce allows only one connection at a time. However, my problem reached beyond that and I spent hours trying to figure out what was going on. Even Microsoft support was of no help.
So, what did I do? Abandoned 2.0 and moved to 2005. The upgrade was much smoother than I expected. I converted my app to a .net 2005 app and used sql mobile 2005. There was almost 0 code I had to modify. In addition, mobile 2005 has more descriptive error messsages, through which I found some more items which might have gone unnoticed. Overall, the experience was very fruitful. Keep in mind that this app consisted of just few forms and did not have any complex integrations. Yours might be different. If you are looking to modify your app to mobile 2005 here are few things to consider.
- Make sure Pocket PC you are using is (2003 or Higher). NetCF 2.0/Mobile 2005 are not supported on lower versions.
- Visual Studio 2005 is required
- OpenNetCf or netcf 1.1 is still compatible, you can reuse almost all the components. OpenNetCf 2.0 has few changes so becareful in upgrading your 1.4 components.
- Building cab now requires a visual studio project, which is simple enough to create.