In February 2013, Microsoft announced that SQL Server Compact EditionĪlthough no new versions or updates are planned, Microsoft willĬontinue to support SQL Compact through their standard lifecycle

On the desktop/laptop deployments, migrating to SQL Server LocalDB/SQLĮxpress is a possible option for many of the current users At this point, we don'tĬonsider this issue to be in that category and hence we are closing Lifecycle and Microsoft is committed to fix any major, productionīlocking issues found in these releases. Still in the support cycle) will continue to be supported through its Last release SQL CE 4.0SP1 (and earlier releases that are SQL Server compact edition is in deprecation mode with no new releases planned The file extension for SQL Server Compact DB data files is SDF so just plan to the use SQL Server Express and its correlated MDF extension for its DB data file(s).

It appears Microsoft deprecated SQL Server Compact and it's suggested to use SQL Server Express moving forward instead. Creating a SQL Server Compact Edition database file in Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Microsoft is dropping support for SDF files with Visual Studio

Visual studio 2017 sql server compact