The Mobile Guy

I see that Lutz Roeder has passed his work on to Red Gate the home of many SQL Server tools and also home to the very neat PInvoke Visual Studio Add-in. (I have them both installed and use them from time to time)

Good luck to Red Gate and lets hope they will do great things with Reflector and the PInvoke add-in…

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During my many years of building applications in Compact Framework, the one thing that always has eaten away at my time is the configuration of the Merge Replication to devices. Many years have brought many changes for the better, but still it can be a bind to set up.

I’ve read many web sites and books on the process and only one person, I feel, is the authoritarian on Merge Replication, Rob Tiffany. His blog at the very least should be on your blog roll.  (Hence being on mine)

So with his help I’ve built this little application to lend a hand in those times when you’ve been pulling your hair out (like I have many a time!)

Its imaginary entitled “Merge Replication Tester” (MRT).

MRT hasn’t got a fantastically slick User Interface, but the experience should be what you care about in this case.

When the application starts, you begin in the set up wizard.  Here you can add all the settings needed for your Merge Replication.

Each page is relevant to different parts of the set up and can be skipped if not required. Once finished, you enter the Main screen.

Here you can do three things:

• Run a merge test
  • This will connect to the SQL Server and run a merge (first run or null change)
• Go back to the setup wizard
• Create one of 4 queries

In the Query window you can write slightly modified SQL to change your local SQL Server Mobile. The modification is in that you can add random characters into the SQL.

• [Ri] will add a random number from 0 to 256
• [Rc] will add a random set of characters with a random length between 0 and 256 (Yes I know, not ideal, but a start)

When back at the main screen you can run one of the 4 queries against the local data store and initiate a merge test.

Things I’d like to improve on:

• A more configurable Set Up wizard
• More “modifications” to SQL
• A better UI? Or do we like it raw as it’s a testing application (uggg more raw)

The application is free as in, free to use and free to distribute. But not free to modify nor pass of as your own, so please let people know I sent you

I expect people will get in touch about it, please do. But don’t expect an answer, well not straight away.

Anyway, enjoy.

CAB Download

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