Choice for a desktop database.

[Frank Rizzo]

I am building a vs2005/c# stand-alone desktop application that will need
to store quite a bit of relational data locally. The database will be
mostly a read-only data store. This application will be distributed to
many locations, so I am definitely not going to use a server-based
product (like SQL Server or SQL Server Express), because I don't need
the installation and support headache.

So I am considering what to use. So far my choices are:

SQL Server Everywhere (cons: no sprocs or views support)
Microsoft Access (cons: has to have OLEDB Jet driver installed)
XML files (cons: have to use XPath for querying and it will probably
get slower as the amount of data increases - I can't slap an index on
the XML file).

I was wondering what folks here thought about these choices and whether
anyone has another alternative to offer.

Regards

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Frank,

In my idea are you not needing a database, just a DataSet in a flat XML file
will do the job for you.

I assume that the client has not to do any writting to that file and that
you are delivering that completely.

Cor

 

[Guest]

Frank,

we just faced the same problem - and decided to try SQLite. There's an
ADO.NET 2.0 provider without any external dependencies
(http://adodotnetsqlite.sourceforge.net/), so it's easy to deploy, an there
are several quite useful admin tools for SQLite. So far, after 6 months of
working with it, SQLite is a good system.

Regards, Phil

 

[Chris Fulstow]

Try Firebird, it's free, powerful and fairly lightweight:
http://www.firebirdsql.org/

It also has an ADO.NET provider:
http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=files&id=netprovider

 

[Tom Shelton]

I am building a vs2005/c# stand-alone desktop application that will need
to store quite a bit of relational data locally. The database will be
mostly a read-only data store. This application will be distributed to
many locations, so I am definitely not going to use a server-based
product (like SQL Server or SQL Server Express), because I don't need
the installation and support headache.

So I am considering what to use. So far my choices are:

SQL Server Everywhere (cons: no sprocs or views support)
Microsoft Access (cons: has to have OLEDB Jet driver installed)
XML files (cons: have to use XPath for querying and it will probably
get slower as the amount of data increases - I can't slap an index on
the XML file).

I was wondering what folks here thought about these choices and whether
anyone has another alternative to offer.

Regards

This is just a me-too post I suppose. If you don't need sql server
express, then I would use SQLite or Firebird.

 

[Peter Macej]

VistaDB seems to be quite good and popular.