The SQL Azure Data Sync Service only works between
SQL Azure databases. However, Microsoft has released a Community
Technology Preview (CTP) of a tool called Microsoft Sync Framework Power
Pack for SQL Azure. This tool lets you synchronize your local database
with an Azure database.
You can download the Power Pack by going to www.microsoft.com/downloads
and searching for "Sync Framework Power Pack". The download page
includes a Microsoft Word document that walks you through the Power
Pack's features, functionality, and components. Download the Power Pack
and also that Word file with the documentation. Be sure to read the
documentation!
After the tool is downloaded, you can install it by double-clicking the .msi
setup file. The install is simple and takes only a few minutes. When
it's finished, a new SQL Azure Data Sync item appears on your Start
menu. Click it to open the SQL Azure Data Sync wizard, shown in Figure 1.
NOTE
This tool requires the
Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0 SDK. Even though you may be able to start
the tool and walk though the wizard, synchronization will fail if you
don't have the Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0 SDK installed.
The SQL Azure Data Sync
Wizard walks you through several steps to connect to your SQL Azure
database and a local SQL Server instance, and select the local tables
you want to synchronize. Your progress through the wizard is displayed
at left.
This tool is smart.
First, the destination database doesn't need to exist in SQL Azure—the
tool creates it for you. Second, if any of your local tables don't have a
primary key, the sync doesn't happen.
One of the components
included in the Power Pack is a Visual Studio plug-in that adds a new
template called SqlAzureDataSyncClient. This template allows developers
to write applications that provide offline synchronization. If you're
using VS 2010, the template doesn't appear in the list of available
templates until you copy the AddSqlAzureDataSyncCacheTemplate.zip file found on your C drive at
Users\[Username]\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ItemTemplates\Visual C#\
to the following, new destination:
Users\[Username]\My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ItemTemplates\Visual C#\
Restart Visual Studio, and the
template shows up in the list of templates when you add a new item to
your Visual Studio project, as shown in Figure 2.
Selecting the SQLAzureDataSyncClient template starts a wizard similar to the one shown in Figure 11-18,
which walks you through creating an offline data cache in SQL Compact.
When the wizard is completed, a SQL Compact database is created, and
code is generated that allows for offline synchronization to sync
changes on demand. The code generated is a set of classes that provides
the synchronization capability.
