OT? VistaDB...anyone use it? Thoughts?

[darrel]

I've been playing with Grafitti CMS and noticed that they use the 'vistadb'
format by default. I had never heard of it before.

http://www.vistadb.net/

I'm intrigued. It looks like a full SQL DB, without the overhead of MS SQL
at the server level. Ie, it's 'just a file' that you can move as needed.

I recently worked on a project with someone that's used to MySQL land. They
were surprised that moving the MS SQL Db wasn't a simple manner of
drag-n-drop. Seems that that would be the main advantage of VistaDB.

Anyone use this for their own web apps? What do you think? Pros? Cons?

-Darrel

 

[Leon Mayne]

I've been playing with Grafitti CMS and noticed that they use the
'vistadb' format by default. I had never heard of it before.

http://www.vistadb.net/

I'm intrigued. It looks like a full SQL DB, without the overhead of MS SQL
at the server level. Ie, it's 'just a file' that you can move as needed.

I recently worked on a project with someone that's used to MySQL land.
They were surprised that moving the MS SQL Db wasn't a simple manner of
drag-n-drop. Seems that that would be the main advantage of VistaDB.

Anyone use this for their own web apps? What do you think? Pros? Cons?

Never seen it before. Personally I'd rather stick with SQL Express, and if I
didn't need stored procedures and wanted it to be single file based then I'd
use the compact edition (SQL Server Everywhere, or whatever it's called
now).

 

[darrel]

Never seen it before. Personally I'd rather stick with SQL Express, and if

I didn't need stored procedures and wanted it to be single file based then
I'd use the compact edition (SQL Server Everywhere, or whatever it's
called now).

I was actually excited about SQL Express in VS 2005, but it seemed to fail
at the implementation level...mainly it seemed that few web hosts bothered
to support it, as you still needed server-level software installed to run
it. VistaDB (what little I know of it) seems to me what SQL Express should
have been. ;o)

I'm not familiar with SQL Server Everywhere. I need to look into that option
too.

-Darrel

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Never seen it before. Personally I'd rather stick with SQL Express, and if
I didn't need stored procedures and wanted it to be single file based then
I'd use the compact edition (SQL Server Everywhere, or whatever it's
called now).

SQL Server Compact Edition...

Also, FYI: http://www.vistadb.net/compare_sql_compact.asp

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

I'm not familiar with SQL Server Everywhere.

No longer exists: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/compact/default.mspx

 

[darrel]

SQL Server Compact Edition...

Also, FYI: http://www.vistadb.net/compare_sql_compact.asp

Ah! Nice. I'll look at that.

(I hope MS outgrows the 'every product needs 12 editions' phase soon... ;o)

-Darrel

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Ah! Nice. I'll look at that.

I'm not sure whether it's been updated for SqlCe 3.5, though...

 

[VistaDB]

I'm not sure whether it's been updated for SqlCe 3.5, though...

For the most part yes. Our compare page shows the differences between
3.1 (VS 2005 only) and 3.5 (VS 2008 only). 3.5 is a patch mostly,
still CPU limits, still no stored procs, missing datatypes, no ASP.NET
support (unless you force the override and MS tells you it is not
supported that way).

I still feel VistaDB is a great replacement for SQL CE for asp.net
developers. We allow shared hosting support (partial trust / medium
trust) and we have true XCopy deployment. Of course I could be a
little biased since it is my product.

Jason

 

[VistaDB]

I've been playing with Grafitti CMS and noticed that they use the 'vistadb'
format by default. I had never heard of it before.

http://www.vistadb.net/

I'm intrigued. It looks like a full SQL DB, without the overhead of MS SQL
at the server level. Ie, it's 'just a file' that you can move as needed.

I recently worked on a project with someone that's used to MySQL land. They
were surprised that moving the MS SQL Db wasn't a simple manner of
drag-n-drop. Seems that that would be the main advantage ofVistaDB.

Anyone use this for their own web apps? What do you think? Pros? Cons?

Pros are deployment options - you can XCopy, go MONO (even using the
ASP.NET for Mono), Compact Framework. All the same VDB3 file format.

Cons - It is file based, but does support multi user. But you are
still working with multi user file based. There are some inherent
cons with that design just because you have to be paranoid about data
loss.

VistaDB does support connection pooling though, so ASP.NET users
benefit there.

Graffiti is a great product, and uses VistaDB very well. They don't
try to hit the DB for every page load, it is a very well designed app
that takes advantage of VistaDB strengths.

Stop by the site and feel free to ask questions in our forums.

http://www.vistadb.net