Stephen (I'm still talking to you)
Remember my posts on this in the last year? I am quite happy with SQL CE as it's got the complete familiar feel of the full SQL (without sprocs and stuff), but you have to live with a 3MB install footprint for the prerequisite. You can probably make the app installer "demand" the SQL CE be a prerequisite and give the dumb user a nice experience, but I haven't explored that. I tried SQL Lite and was quite impressed, as it has zero install footprint and you get a complete ADO.NET provider. I just got hung up on some technical quandaries about DateTime columns and decided to return to it later, which I'm sure I will. The dark horse is of course ESENT <http://managedesent.codeplex.com/> , which I've raved about before as a hidden gem inside Windows. I'm using it in two production apps now, but I wrote a wrapper library around the low-level managed API translation. The downside of this is the learning curve to get the hang of how it works. It's quite simple, but has a peculiar style that you have to get your head around. Greg
