c#: storing lots of data in my.settings

Question

i will need to store 3 tables of data

instead of implementing an entire database backend, i just want to store the record for these tables in application.settings

has anyone done this before?

i dont care about security

is it advisable to do it with application settings? how else would you do it?

perhaps storing a matrix in application.settings would be OK?

Answer 1

My.Settings is not a substitute for a database. You should consider System.Data.SQLite instead. SQLite is a in-process database that stores data in a single file. System.Data.SQLite is a .NET binding for it.

Answer 2

Why not. If you can fit the data in memory without a problem (and what is you definition for a lot of data???) and you do not need db features like sql and ACID you can store it in app.settings without a problem

Answer 3

Yes; this is possible.

You can make a (Typed) DataSet, then call WriteXml into a StringWriter and put the string into the Settings object.

Answer 4

Hey,

For the "how else would you do it" part of the question, I would consider XML or CSV. XML specially because LINQ to XML make it real nice to work with XML, but CSV too helps reduce space and here's a really fast reader for it: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/CsvReader.aspx

HTH.