Compatibility Compatibility is more than a buzzword.  It impacts your company’s bottom line, and programmer productivity.  Does anyone doubt that SQL Server is the most heavily used database for Visual Studio programmers?  Why is that?  TSQL / SQL Server Where does Microsoft build their solutions?  They build them for SQL Server.  What do most courses, tutorials and books usually teach for database programming?  Dominate position in the market Gartner puts Microsoft SQL Server in use in 74.7% of all enterprises.  SQL Server ships more units that IBM and Oracle combined.  Do you think all of those deployments of SQL Server are being used in an enterprise manner?  How many do you think are hot spares, standby servers, backups, testing, or staging servers?  Why do you think Microsoft released SQL CE? SQL CE – lightweight SQL Server SQL CE was originally designed for the mobile application market.  It was not until Microsoft decided to obsolete the MSDE engine that SQL CE was opened to the desktop.  Microsoft realized that many users needed a lightweight alternative to SQL Server.  Users need more deployment options and ways to access their data.  I personally feel that Microsoft missed the mark with SQL CE.  It has no views, no stored procs, no CLR support, and no ASP.NET support.  These were good limitations on the mobile device, but on the desktop they look like decisions to protect the big brother of SQL CE – SQL Server. VistaDB – An even more lightweight SQL Server What if you could build a product without those limitations?  Make it compatible with SQL Server, expand the features of SQL CE, and make it easier to deploy? Most Windows programmers already have the tools and skills to use SQL Server, so why not make it as close to the API as you can?That is exactly why VistaDB 3 was moved to be more compatible with SQL Server. Enter ADO.NET  Microsoft told all developers that the old ADO / ODBC / OLEDB driver model was obsolete with the advent of Dot Net.  ADO.NET is said to be based on ADO, but the technology so changed so extensively that it should be conceived of as an entirely new product.   (Just like the evolution of VistaDB 2 to 3)  The current model is based around message like models and provider factories. VistaDB is fully compliant with ADO.NET.  In fact, if you write your app to the generic DBProviderFactory we are the only database you can take your existing code to from SQL Server.  Every other database has different syntax and data types that still require your generic code to know too much information about the underlying database.  Even if you do not know how to write to the DBProviderFactory, you can leverage your SQLClient knowledge to write database code quickly.  The same objects exist for VistaDB, same namespaces, just with a VistaDB in front instead of SQL.  VistaDBConnection instead of SQLConnection, etc.  This means you spend less time looking up API differences, and more time on your application.  And since most ADO.NET examples are written for SQL Server, that information is almost directly applicable to VistaDB as well.  Need to know how to pass parameters to a connection?  It is the same as SQL Server.   That just makes good programming sense, use the knowledge you already have. DDA – The other API What if you don’t know ADO.NET?  Maybe you are coming from XBase, FoxPro, Codebase, or some other non relational data store.  Or maybe you are just a hobbyist who thinks learning SQL is too complex.  VistaDB gives you an alternative.  The Direct Data Access (DDA) is a simple cursor based API.  I personally never liked the ADO provider model, I thought it was too complex for simple application needs.  I still like to use DDA to write utilities and other applications where I want to minimize the amount of database code I write. Visual Studio support The majority of Windows developers use Visual Studio.  If you are going to build a developer product today it had better support Visual Studio.  There are still many database products that do not integrate with Visual Studio very well.  VistaDB integrates with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 to let you use Visual Studio to build graphical connections to databases and tables just like when you use SQL Server. This level of integration is to once again allow you to minimize learning time, and maximize your programming time. What about when you are away from the developer workstation?  Are companies going to buy Visual Studio just so techs can debug SQL scripts?  Microsoft created an entire platform of the Visual Studio Team System for Databases.  VistaDB gives you a number of graphical tools to make supporting your databases in production easier. Move your data! How easy is it to diagnose and debug SQL Server databases once they are in the field?  Judging by the number of third party add-ons designed to make it easier I would say it is pretty difficult.  I have heard many horror stories from programmers who have incredibly complex scripts and SQL Server instance schemes to track multiple versions of databases for multiple clients.  At VistaDB we let you XCopy the database file (yes, a single file). Need to restore a special version of a schema from a client that is reporting application problems?  They can zip the file and email it to you, or burn it to DVD, or FTP it.  This is one of the little ways that VistaDB can make you more productive in programming.  No need to have machines dedicated to a specific customer’s version of the database (SQL service packs, customizations, etc).  Is your customer running on a 64 bit server, and your developers on 32 bit workstations?  Have databases on Windows Mobile 5 that you need to query on desktop Windows? No problem with VistaDB, the database format is the same.  You can still XCopy the database.  VistaDB Makes Sense VistaDB makes great sense for developers looking to leverage their current skills and maximize their programming time.  Are we a replacement for SQL Server?  No, VistaDB is a lightweight alternative.  Over time our API and function set will continue to move more inline with SQL Server.  And performance will continue to improve.  SQL Server has had over 10 years and thousands of programmers to get it to where it is today.  VistaDB 3 has been in production a little over 6 months.  I am very proud about the gains we have made to date, but I am realistic that we have lots of room for improvement. VistaDB is a great tool for the Small and Medium Business (SMB) segment today.  There is no other non Microsoft database available today that can match VistaDB feature for feature.  And the price simply cannot be beat fo the value we provide.