Well, when I say “can” ignore I actually mean I can’t work with it at the moment using Sql Server CE. Apparently, according to Danny who has been great at posting an update regarding the decisions that have been made, the Sql Server CE made the decision to focus their attention on other aspects of the product in the lead up to the launch of Visual Studio 2008. This will mean that we should expect another release shortly afterwards (most likely in line with Sql Server 2008 and the Entity Framework) which will ensure Sql CE users can work with the Entity Framework.
What this means for us product developers (ie ISVs) is yet another round of software updates, yet another round of compatibility testing and yes, you guessed it, yet another round of bug fixes ;-). I’m not going to comment on whether Sql CE should be released in line with VS2008 or Sql Server 2008 but I think that it would be good to have slightly less frequent releases of this product in favour of product stability. In particular getting setup to work with Sql CE and Merge replication (with the most recent bits) is a bit of a pig’s breakfast. Although this article does help considerably in understanding the various bits and pieces.