I currently have an ASP.NET MVC 3 project, plus a class library project, that I am planning on open-sourcing. Before I do that though I want to clean up the project a little bit. One modification I want to make is with the database. Currently the site is published to a shared hosting server and I setup the SQL database on that server. However, since people will be forking the project and running it locally I’d like to just attach a SQL server express database or something that is part of the project. I want people to clone the repository, open the project, press F5 and have it run. Currently they’d have to setup a SQL database and create all the tables and stuff.
The solution consists of two projects: MvcUI and Domain. Domain is where all the application logic occurs. In fact, the domain is UI agnostic which means that it could be consumed by a desktop application just as easily as it could be by a web application.
I would like the database to be part of the Domain (class library) project. I have never done this before. If anyone could provide a simple explanation for how I would need to go about setting this up I would be thrilled. It would be very nice to have the database just be a in the solution because I could pre-populate it with some basic data. What do I need to do to get this database in my project as a database file or what not?
SQL Server Compact Edition is a portable SQL database that should do exactly what you are asking.