I’m currently trying to develop a program which stores lots of data, similar to an address book, I suppose, with the intent that new data will be periodically added to the program over time.
I know that I could set up a SQL server, and have the program interface with that, but if I want to share my program with other people, I can’t guarantee that they’d have access to the server, or that they can set up a server of their own to hold the data.
I also know that I could simply hard-code all of the data into instantiated objects, but that is inelegant, and promises to be incredibly irritating to alter or maintain.
Is there someway I could design the program in such a way that it maintains a database-like structure, yet has no reliance on external programs (such as a SQL server)?
Sure. You can use XML. XML can be also used as a datasource for ASP.NET components, just like a database.