My project uses local sql database.
I tried the app on a non development machine for first time.

Got a message saying it was downloading required files, sql 2008 express, at a whopping 600MB+ file.
Please tell me I've done something wrong, and any user of my app will not have to download this.

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I think you didn't do anything wrong. However if I were to consider a lite SQL I'd consider OTM (other than Microsoft) SQL solutions like MySQL (still looking over MariaDB) and of course SQLITE. https://www.sqlite.org/download.html shows the binaries to be in the under 10 megabyte size.

My oldest MySQL system is now over 10 years old and still running.

Yikes!
That file download is totally unacceptable for me.
I've used SQLite in the past, but for some reason when I started this, I thought I'd try the SQL which comes along with visual studio.

Just have to re-write database code for use with my sqlite library, sqlite is on most if not all post winME windows machines already I believe.

Thank you for the reply, rproffitt.

If code porting time is a factor I'd look again at MySQL. A student here wrote an unattended install routine into their C# app so if MySQL was not found it would fetch, install and setup the MySQL system for their app. I'm not sure if that's a good idea but it shows it is possible to make a click to run app, even if we use MySQL.

SO you are running your application on a seperate machine, and have to downlioad a 600+ MB file? That is weird, because .NET has all the libraries needed to connect to a SQL Server database, local or remote. (System.SQL or something like that). How are you connecting to the database exactly? Depending on the libraries might explain it. I know if you use the SMO objects they require additional files

I assume I understood this correctly

I've changed it all to sqlite now.
It was really simple as all the classed seemed to have virtually the same name.

I was utilizing "using System.Data.Sql;" now it's "using System.Data.Sqlite;"

To create my database using sql I went to (in solution explorer) add -> new item -> data -> service based database, which created an .mdf file. Never done anything else special.

When I ran it in a virgin win10pro VM, it started to download 1 of 3 files, the first of which was "sql server 2008 express".

Using VS2015 community.

commented: Thanks for the update. Good to know. +8
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