I have a commercial Windows desktop application that needs a backend database. I feel that SQL Server would not be the right choice as it is overkill.
What would you recommend and how would you deploy it?
+5
A:
If you're looking for something to embed into your application (rather than having a seperate server running), look into SQL Server Compact Edition or SQLite.
Justin Niessner
2009-06-17 20:48:54
+18
A:
You could try SQLite. It's a full relational database that is saved to a file and loaded on program load. It is perfect if you don't want the overhead of a full SQL server.
It can be used from C, C++, C# and VB.NET (System.Data.Sqlite), Java (through JDBC) and is even included with Python! (the sqlite3 module)
Lucas Jones
2009-06-17 20:49:21
I second that. Really cool product. Actually, pretty fast for most of the purposes.
elcuco
2009-06-17 20:50:51
Yes, a lot of well known and widespread products already use it, from Adobe Lightroom to Google Chrome. Look at the list : http://www.sqlite.org/famous.html. By the way, there are plugin for Firefox that give you access to your database...
Sylvain
2009-06-18 17:19:40
+3
A:
There are quite a few options that really depends on what you need.
There's the scaled-down SQL Server variants: SQL Server Express (free) or SQL Server Compact Edition.
Then there's a number of .NET based database systems that compile directly into your app - check out VistaDB as one of the most prominent and much-talked-about products.
Then there's a number of other SQL-based system, e.g. Firebird (open-source) or MySQL amongst many others.
Without knowing more about what your real needs (and reasons against SQL Server) are, giving lots of advice is a bit challenging.
marc_s
2009-06-17 21:00:17
A:
Firebird is a really cool database for Desktop application
There is an embedded version which can be simple to deploy.
Many software use it for this : I will just give a few example :
and many others here
I also use it and I'm very happy with it :)
Hugues Van Landeghem
2009-06-18 17:02:29