Deploying SQL Express applications...?!

[Danny Tuppeny]

Hi All,

I'm just starting to develop an application, which I thought would use SQL
Express in the way I'd usually use Access. My app needs a way to store some
data and be able to run SQL command against it (it's not necessary, but it'd
be nice). With Access, I'd just throw in a connection string pointing at an
MDB in my application directory, and I wouldn't require the user to have
anything.

I was under the impression that with connection strings pointing to MDFs,
that some SQL stuff was built into .net2, and I could use this in the same
way, but after a quick search of the web, it seems this isn't possible, and
SQL Express is just a development tool, and my users would need SQL Server
to run my application. That's completely out of the question, since I'm just
developing a small freeware application.

Is there any alternative to this? I don't want to use Access, but I don't
want to require SQL licences for a tiny little application with a 500kb
database!

Short of Access (or embedded MySQL or something!) is there any way to use
SQL??

Thanks,

Danny Tuppeny

 

[John Vottero]

Hi All,

I'm just starting to develop an application, which I thought would use SQL
Express in the way I'd usually use Access. My app needs a way to store
some data and be able to run SQL command against it (it's not necessary,
but it'd be nice). With Access, I'd just throw in a connection string
pointing at an MDB in my application directory, and I wouldn't require the
user to have anything.

I was under the impression that with connection strings pointing to MDFs,
that some SQL stuff was built into .net2, and I could use this in the same
way, but after a quick search of the web, it seems this isn't possible,
and SQL Express is just a development tool, and my users would need SQL
Server to run my application. That's completely out of the question, since
I'm just developing a small freeware application.

Is there any alternative to this? I don't want to use Access, but I don't
want to require SQL licences for a tiny little application with a 500kb
database!

Short of Access (or embedded MySQL or something!) is there any way to use
SQL??

You can redistribute SQL with your application. With SQL 2000, the
redistributable version is called MSDE. With SQL 2005, I *think* that the
redistributable version is SQL Express. Of course, SQL 2005 is still in
beta so you can't redistribute anything until it's released (Nov 7th?).

 

[Danny Tuppeny]

Hi John,

You can redistribute SQL with your application. With SQL 2000, the
redistributable version is called MSDE. With SQL 2005, I *think* that the
redistributable version is SQL Express. Of course, SQL 2005 is still in
beta so you can't redistribute anything until it's released (Nov 7th?).

I don't really want to distribute anything, I want it to run out of the box
(like connecting to an Access db - you don't require Access installed). I
want my app to be installed with ClickOnce to make things easy, and I think
SQL Express will just make it a nightmare!

I'm just playing around with db4o now, which might save me some time on
writing SQL too, and it seems pretty portable, as long as my
ClickOnce-installed app is allowed write access somewhere on the disk
without having to bug the user for permissions!

Danny

 

[Danny Tuppeny]

Hi John,

You can redistribute SQL with your application. With SQL 2000, the
redistributable version is called MSDE. With SQL 2005, I *think* that the
redistributable version is SQL Express. Of course, SQL 2005 is still in
beta so you can't redistribute anything until it's released (Nov 7th?).

I don't really want to distribute anything, I want it to run out of the box
(like connecting to an Access db - you don't require Access installed). I
want my app to be installed with ClickOnce to make things easy, and I think
SQL Express will just make it a nightmare!

I'm just playing around with db4o now, which might save me some time on
writing SQL too, and it seems pretty portable, as long as my
ClickOnce-installed app is allowed write access somewhere on the disk
without having to bug the user for permissions!

Danny