I’ve been doing quite a lot of Windows Mobile development lately coupled with SQL Server Compact 3.5 and the thing that struck me pretty quickly was how shabby the actual Microsoft tools for the job are.

Whilst you can open an SDF database in Management Studio, you can’t edit the data, or script it or do anything useful really. Using Visual Studio is a little better, as you can at least edit the data, but annoyingly despite telling VS to remember the database password, it never does.

One of the most infuriating things that I came across recently is the fact that you can’t change the order or the names of the columns once you have created them. So if you get something wrong, you have to delete the column and add it again. Shabby.

So after a bit of searching around I came across a whole range of tools devoted to working with SQL Compact databases. Most of them do a fair job, but the best one by far in my opinion is ExportSqlCe.

ExportSqlCe is an add-in for Management Studio 2008, which allows you to script out the schema and data from an SDF as well as viewing and editing the tables. Put simply this is what Management Studio should have been able to do from the off. The best bit about it is that it’s free and open source.

So if you work with SDF files, head over to CodePlex and grab yourself a copy.

http://exportsqlce.codeplex.com/

One of the things that has been niggling me with MonoDevelop – and to be fair it’s more an issue with the Finder – is that by default it’s difficult to run multiple instances of it. It’s always useful to have more than one solution open when you want to compare or copy and paste code from one project to another.

A quick search on Stack Overflow found a nice simple solution, which involves kicking off the app from the terminal using -n to tell the Finder to run a new instance. But being lazy, I can’t be bothered typing stuff unnecessarily, so a quick solution is to wrap it in an AppleScript app wrapper.

Fire up Applications > Utilities > AppleScript Editor, type in:

do shell script “open -n /Applications/MonoDevelop.app”

Then select File > Save As, on the save dialog change the File Format to Application and save it somewhere safe (not in the applications folder), using the name MonoDevelop.

Then for a nice finishing touch, go back to the Applications folder and click on the MonoDevelop icon, press CMD + I to bring up the Get Info screen, click on the application icon in the top left of the screen and CMD + C to copy it.

Go back and find where you saved the AppleScript file, bring up the Get Info window with CMD + I, click on the application icon and paste in the MonoDevelop one with a CMD + V.

Then all you need to do is to drag the new AppleScript app to the Dock and you have a quick and easy way of firing up multiple instances of MonoDevelop.