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Configuring Connectivity Support in IIS

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Before you can access a database in Microsoft SQL Server by using replication or remote data access (RDA) through HTTP, you must set up a virtual directory and configure the appropriate NTFS file system permissions. Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 (SQL Server Compact 3.5) provides the Configure Web Synchronization Wizard to create and manage virtual directories and NTFS permissions.

The topics in this section describe using the Configure Web Synchronization Wizard to set up IIS for connectivity support. The topics also describe how to set up IIS manually. For more information, see Using the Configure Web Synchronization Wizard and Manually Configuring IIS.

Virtual Directory Recommendations and Default Settings

SQL Server Compact 3.5 relies on virtual directories created by Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) to access data from a database in SQL Server.

Virtual Directory Recommendations

We recommend that you create a virtual directory for each smart device application that requires data access, whether you are implementing replication or RDA. By using the Configure Web Synchronization Wizard, you can create individual virtual directories for each smart device application.

  • IIS authentication and authorization is controlled at the virtual directory level. By creating a virtual directory for each SQL Server Compact 3.5 distributed application or for different groups of RDA clients, you can establish the exact authentication and authorization policy that you require for each application which uses RDA or merge replication.
  • The SQL Server Compact 3.5 Server Agent allocates a separate worker-thread pool for each IIS virtual directory. These worker threads are used when database synchronization or RDA operations are performed. When you configure an IIS virtual directory for each distributed application to control different authentication and authorization policies for different applications, then this increases the number of worker threads. This also increases the number of replication or RDA operations or clients that can be active at the same time. Depending on the configuration of the server, this might hinder performance if more threads are launched than the computer can manage. If you have multiple applications that are using different virtual directories on the same server, you might need to decrease the total number of threads allocated for each virtual directory.

It is also recommended that you create one NTFS or FAT content folder for each IIS virtual directory. This content folder contains the SQL Server Compact 3.5 Server Agent (Sqlcesa35.dll) and the temporary input and output message files that SQL Server Compact 3.5 creates during synchronization and RDA operations.

Important

It is strongly recommended that you use NTFS instead of FAT, because NTFS provides much stronger security. When you use NTFS, you can use NTFS file permissions to limit the number of clients that can access SQL Server Compact 3.5 for replication or RDA.

Virtual Directory Default Settings

The Configure Web Synchronization Wizard configures a number of virtual directory default settings to ensure minimum SQL Server Compact 3.5 requirements are met to successfully support replication and RDA. The following settings are set on the virtual directory:

For IIS version 5.1

  • The application protection mode is set to Medium (Pooled).
  • The Script Source Access option is not supported and not enabled.

For IIS Version 6.0

  • The virtual directory is created in the Application Pool DefaultAppPool.
  • The SQL Server Compact 3.5 Server Agent is added as a Web Service Extension and the status is set to Allowed.

For more information about advanced security configuration options, see Advanced Security Configurations and the IIS documentation.

In This Section

Topic Description

Using the Configure Web Synchronization Wizard

Describes the wizard that lets you configure connectivity for data synchronization between SQL Server and SQL Server Compact 3.5.

Manually Configuring IIS

Describes how to configure connectivity manually.

See Also

Concepts

Configuring the IIS Server Environment
Configuring the SQL Server Environment

Help and Information

Getting Assistance (SQL Server Compact 3.5 Service Pack 1)