A couple of years ago I asked in here what people recommended for an "RDB lite" with little to no installation footprint. Some people recommended SQLite, but for some reasons I can't remember I rejected it as unsuitable. I've been running with SQL CE since then simply because it was from Microsoft, it was free, well documented and it had a familiar style. CE does have an installation footprint, which is small, but still a nuisance sometimes.
I just revisited SQLite <http://www.sqlite.org/index.html> and ran a few tests with a VS2010 solution and the ADO.NET provider <http://sqlite.phxsoftware.com/> . Hey, I'm impressed ... it just works. The ADO .NET code follows the familiar coding style (connection, command, adapter, etc). The raw SQLite uses a plain C API which is indigestible for .NET developers, so the provider is the miraculous part that makes things easy for us. Best of all, there is zero installation footprint, you just reference the DLL. The SQLite VS2010 designer is working but incomplete, so I look forward to seeing it expanded. I'm pretty sure I'm going to abandon CE in future projects and use SQLite instead. Cheers, Greg
