The ESENT seems to have some very convenient features - like the long value columns. I'm glad you raised the topic / re-discovered it.
_____ Ian Thomas Victoria Park, Western Australia _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Saturday, 7 August 2010 2:55 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: Extensible Storage Engine Folks, a couple of years ago I asked in here for recommendations about what lightweight "in-process" database I could use easily from .NET apps. I eventually settled upon SQL Server Compact Edition due to familiarity with its big brother and the footprint was quite small, just a single MSI install of a few MB of runtime files. There is another contender that no one mentioned back then... Only days ago I pinned down the existence of the Extensible <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Storage_Engine> Storage Engine (MSDN <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684493(EXCHG.10).aspx> ). I knew something like this was out there for Exchange Server storage, but I was misled by comments that it was the JET engine. The article link clarifies what "JET" means. It turns out that ESE is implemented in a single ESENT.DLL with a documented API, and it's an ISAM file of all things (memories of COBOL come flooding back!). It would be fabulous to be able to use ESE from .NET projects, but sadly, there is no managed wrapper around ESE, and one look at the huge C API scared me off any hobby attempts to make one. Yesterday on CodeProject I saw that someone is planning to release a managed wrapper, but it's still so early that nothing is available for download. I also saw that someone has implemented collections using ESE as the backing storage, which seems a bit pointless. Anyway, just a heads up -- Greg
