What's a good "mobile" .NET database that supports LINQ?

Question

I'm in the process of refactoring an application and I've decided to use a mobile/embedded database.

I've been reading about SQL Server Compact Edition, but I was wondering if any of you knew of any other databases that could be used and don't have huge download sizes, as my current application is about ~2MB (installer). SQLite would be nice, but AFAIK the GSoC implementation of LINQ-to-SQLite is rather buggy at the moment.

Thanks!

Answer 1

VistaDB and (as you mentioned) Sql Server Compact Edition are two small options for an embedded database. Sql Server Compact Edition can be used with Linq to SQL or Entity Framework. I believe VistaDB can be used with the Entity Framework.

Also, if you do not require a relational database, you may want to consider db4o. Rob Conery writes about this here.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

I haven't used it myself, but you might want to look at BlackFish. I'm not sure about its Linq support though, but Delphi supports Linq so it may. Another may be Embedded Firebird - again, not sure about the Linq side of things.

Answer 3

I have tried out db40 once (not the compact edition) - it is an object database. However, depending on your needs it may be a rather comfortable thing to use. They note that they support linq even for the compact edition: http://www.db4o.com/s/compactframeworkdb.aspx