Database recommendations for Windows app

[Thomas Bartkus]

Will McGugan" <news at NOwillmcguganSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:42b97240$0$24467$da0feed9 at news.zen.co.uk...
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to write a windows app that accesses a locally stored database.
> There are a number of tables, the largest of which has 455,905 records.
>
> Can anyone recommend a database that runs on Windows, is fast /
> efficient and can be shipped without restrictions or extra downloads?
>
> I have googled and found plenty of information on databases, its just
> that I dont have enough experience with databases to know which one is
> best for my task!

If you are writing strictly for the MS Windows platform
   And
If the database is running single user with a "locally stored database" on a
Windows workstation.
   Then
The MS Access file based (.mdb) system is hard to argue with.
You wouldn't have to distribute the (rather expensive) Access application
since this is little more than a front for the underlying DAO/ADO database
libraries that are built into the warp and woof of MS Windows.  Your Python
application can address the DAO or ADO directly as these will libraries will
be pre-installed and/or freely available for MS Windows.  Fast, freely
available, no license restrictions, and no need for extra downloads for a
reasonably recent (Win2000, XP) operating system.

On the other hand, if operating system portability were a concern (as it
should be!), I might suggest MySQL.
A Python/MySQL application can jump between Windows to Linux (all flavors!)
to Unix to BSD without need to alter a single line of code.

You were writing a Python app, weren't you :-)
Thomas Bartkus