VistaDB Express Edition Released!
VistaDB 3.3 Express Edition
What is it?
VistaDB Express is a free edition of VistaDB for non commercial use. This includes hobbysts, mono developers, open source projects, personal websites, user groups, sample application, schools, and much much more.
Why an Express Edition?
We get asked quite a bit about distribution with free and open source projects (especially mono developers), we needed a license to specifically help these developers use all the cool features of VistaDB in their community as well.
Microsoft decided a long time ago that the Express Development tool (VB Express, C# Express, C++ Express) editions are not allowed to load third party plugins. These editions were specifically aimed at the non professional developer community. Since they can't load the GUI plugins for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 anyway, we decided to simplify the offering for these users.
Where do I get it?
Get VistaDB Express here or the VistaDB 30 day trial.
VistaDB Express Highlights
Designed for use with Mono and Microsoft Express builds for personal projects, there are no Visual Studio plugins.
- No Server Explorer or Data Binding (Express Editions cannot load them anyway)
- May not be used for commercial purposes
- No in memory databases
- No Isolated storage support
- Database files may not be renamed (must be VDB3)
- No Compact Framework support. No Sync Services. No LINQ. No Client / Server support.
Even with those restrictions it still has a lot of things you can't get from SQL CE:
- Shared Hosting Support
- ASP.Net websites with connection pooling support
- CLR Procs
- TSQL Procs
- UDF Functions
- Updatable Views
- SQL Exception Handling
- Data Builder GUI for managing your database
- 64 Bit Windows Support
For a full review of VistaDB vs SQL CE see our comparison page on the VistaDB.net website.
For a full list of restrictions view the EULA for VistaDB.
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Comments
Karl Prosser on on 2.26.2008 at 12:43 AM
sounds very exciting. It will be interesting to see what open source projects will utilize this.
Jason Short on on 2.26.2008 at 12:47 PM
I know that Ralf Westphal is working on a project called NSimpleDB which is a client side version of the simple DB database from Amazon. He is building it all in Dot Net and using VistaDB Express as the engine. I have emails from about a dozen other projects that have been waiting for something like this, but they don't have anything public yet.
It is pretty exciting for us as well.
Tom van der Vlugt on on 2.27.2008 at 12:26 PM
This is very interesting, since SQL CE is too much crippled in any way. It's more crippled than JET SQL. SQL Express is too heavy, because the engine consumes a lot of resources. VistaDB Express is very compact and in managed code. I love it! And VistaDB has nearly the same functionality as the great SQL Server express, but in a compact managed way. When I've time, I'll take a look at it. I'm very enthusiastic.
Tom van der Vlugt on on 2.28.2008 at 2:02 PM
I have a blog located at vs2008insandouts.blogspot.com about Visual Studio, 2008 Office 2007 and VistaDB.
I've given it a try and I'm glad to use it. It presents me with very very tiny databases based on a very very tiny database engine but with the power of SQL Server Express. Not SQL Server CE which is even more crippled than Jet Access SQL!
Keep up the good work!