Question

I am wriing a vb.net windows application to log and store information. then display it in a sortable multiple column listbox (I personally like FlexGrid by Component One).

Example:
http://www.rptsoftware.com/help/microsoft_access_thirdparty/images/msflexgrid2small.jpg

However… I am not sure how to go about storing the information.

Should I go with a .sdf file database, registry, simply storing them in a file, or some other method?

What I need is to be able to:

read/write/delete from it

read possibly up to a 20mb file and sorting it without a lot of lag

be transported to multiple systems and maintain these writes (installed on many systems)

I know I could split up the reading/writing to anther thread. Even to other .DLL’s and whatnot. But as for storing. Not sure what the best option is.

Any ideas?
-Patrick

Answer 1

If you want something lightweight and portable theb you should take a look at SQLite. There’s a driver for .NET which you can download from:

System.Data.SQLite – An open source ADO.NET provider for the SQLite database engine

Another alternative is to use an Access database. If you have a copy of Microsoft Office that has an Access license then you can create the bare bones of the database then hook it up to your application. You don’t need further copies of Access for your code to run on other computers to access the database file itself.