Oops
my fault.
I didn't refer to the latest documentations.
Now back to your question.
i see many references to support for using sql ce in desktop apps but have not been able to make this work. help!
What have you tried?
And what were the results?
Did you follow the following steps mentioned in the LLBLGen Pro v.2.5 docs "Using the generated code -> Database specific features":
To be able to target SqlServer CE Desktop, you first has to create a SqlServer project, similar to what you have to do for CF.NET support. Then, you have to follow this list of steps to generate and compile a successful project:
At tab 1 in the Generator Configuration dialog, platform .NET 2.0 or .NET 3.0 has to be chosen. CF.NET 1.0/2.0 or .NET 1.x aren’t supported for SqlServer CE Desktop.
At tab 2, the template bindings for SqlServer CE Desktop, SD.TemplateBindings.SqlServerCEDesktopSpecific.NET20 have to be moved above the SqlServer specific template bindings, SD.TemplateBindings.SqlServerSpecific.NET20, so the SqlServer CE Desktop specific templates overrule the ones for SqlServer
Code can now be generated normally for adapter or selfservicing.
Stored procedures aren’t supported, so if your LLBLGen Pro project contains stored procedure calls, there might be classes being generated for stored procedures but that’s not used in the compiled assembly as it contains a conditional compilation statement: if CEDesktop as a conditional token is defined, the stored procedure call code is excluded. The CEDesktop conditional compilation symbol is also used to create proper System.Data.SqlServerCE targeting code instead of System.Data.SqlClient using code.
When loading the generated VS.NET projects, the references to the SqlServerCE DQE for .NET 2.0 should be checked as well as the reference to the SqlServerCE client dll shipped with the SqlServer CE SDK. If they're not correct, please correct the references. To be able to connect to a SqlServerCE desktop database, one has to adjust the connection string, as this connection string is the one used to connect to the SqlServer catalog from which the LLBLGen Pro project was created. It has to have the format shown by the following example:
<add key="Main.ConnectionString" value="data source=c:\pathtodb\Northwind.sdf;"/>
As SqlServer CE Desktop doesn’t support multiple catalogs nor multiple schemas, these features aren’t available. Also COM+/System.Transactions transactions aren’t supported. All other LLBLGen Pro native features, like dependency injection, validation, authorization etc. are supported.