Database Choice for a C# 2008 front end

Question

I was wondering what and why you would choose to be able to make a database that can support no more than 100 users with no more than 10 using it at once with a Visual Studio 2008 C# Windows Form front end to access it by. I have to access the database over a network connection, not just on the local machine. I also need to define where the database is found at run-time in the code as opposed to the "Data Source" view in Visual Studio. If my question needs reframing or is not understood, let me know and I will adjust. Part of my problem is I am not sure even how to ask the right question, much less what the answer is.

Answer 1

If it is not for comercial purposes you can try SQL Server 2008 Express. It can integrate nicely with Visual Studio 2008 for development and has support for LINQ, Entity Data Model and ADO.NET Entity Framework to make it easy to create next generation data-enabled applications.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/sql/default.aspx

You can also store your connections strings in the application configuration file and retrieve them programatically for setting up the database connection.

http://www.codeguru.com/columns/DotNet/article.php/c7987/

Answer 2

I would probably go with Sql Server Express, it's free and works well with .NET. Assuming your schema is not changing at runtime you can probably still use the design time data source features in Visual Studio. The connection information is stored in the app.config file which you can update after the app is deployed to point to a different database. You can also develop a class that gets the connection info from somewhere else as well and just use that when you need to open a database connection.

Answer 3

I know using mssql you can pick between different connection strings for all of your db calls, just do something like

Command.Connection = GetMyConnectionWithWhateverLogicINeed();

Answer 4

I'd have a look at Sql Server Workgroup Edition

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/workgroup/

Express edition used to have some limiting features for more than about 5 users and it is not supplied with any management tools which is a bit disheartening.

Answer 5

I'm not sure I totally get what you are asking, Matt, but I can tell you that I developed a series of apps written with VS 2008 and we used a MySQL DB for it. While I'm definitely not a DB guru at this point, I've not had many issues with using MySQL.

Perhaps if you rephrase your question, we can provide better answers.

Answer 6

SQLite for sure.

ADO 2.0 Provider