That's one of the connection strings I tried:

DBI Connect('Provider=Microsoft.SQLSERVER.CE.OLDEDB.3.5;Data Source=C:
+\temp\MFDB.sdf','',...) failed: Can't Open Connection 'Provider=Micro
+soft.SQLSERVER.CE.OLDEDB.3.5;Data Source=C:\temp\MFDB.sdf'

  Package    : DBD::ADO::dr
  Filename   : C:/strawberry/perl/site/lib/DBD/ADO.pm
  Line       : 158
  Last error : -2146824582

OLE exception from "ADODB.Connection":

Provider cannot be found. It may not be properly installed.

Win32::OLE(0.1709) error 0x800a0e7a
    in METHOD/PROPERTYGET "Open" at test.pl line 7
[download]

Comments I read about other providers makes me suspicious that only a 32bit OLEDB provider is available and it doesn't work or isn't available on 64bit Windows 7.

update: I have both 32bit and 64bit versions of SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 SP2 installed on the system.

update: and the code that produced the above error is:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
use strict;
use warnings;
use DBI;


my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:ADO:Provider=Microsoft.SQLSERVER.CE.OLDEDB
+.3.5;Data Source=C:\\temp\\MFDB.sdf",undef,undef);
[download]

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