Microsoft Edge and other Microsoft products use an Extensible Storage Engine. If you have edge installed on windows, you can find the database file here:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_xxxxxxx\AC
\MicrosoftEdge\User\Default\DataStore\Data\nouser1\xxxxxxxx\DBStore\spartan.edb
I would like to read this database from my .NET app.
The only tool I have seen for viewing this data appears to be deprecated:
http://www.woanware.co.uk/forensics/esedbviewer.html
I can't seem to find any relevant nuget packages for querying this type of database. Does anyone have experience working with this type of database?
The database engine is esent.dll, and you can access it in several different ways:
C API. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg269259(v=exchg.10).aspx
C#. https://github.com/microsoft/managedesent
Simplified C# (Isam layer). Easier to use, but not everything is exposed. https://github.com/Microsoft/ManagedEsent/tree/master/isam
(Disclosure: I've worked on the above products.)
That being said, if you just modify a random database, you can impact the host process's integrity, and it might end up crashing.
If you're a law-enforcement agent and it's for forensic purposes, Microsoft should be able to assist you (I haven't done it myself, but I've heard that they'll do it).
-martin
I am creating one delphi application which is fetches data from database. For accessing the database through delphi i am using DOA components.
Is it possible to run the built exe on any machine? If not then what are the option available? thanks for the help.
Yes, it is possible to run your exe on any machine. You only need Oracle client to be installed.
The DOA components are not free as you can tell by reading their website. So you'll have to purchase these components, and you'll have to install and configure the Oracle client on each machine.
But they may still be your best option. Alternatively, you can use ADO, but the ADO Oracle driver from Oracle apparently is instable, while the ADO Oracle driver from Microsoft is much stabler, but doesn't support blobs.
These problems are solved in ADO.NET, but that won't do you any good using Delphi 5.
I'm sorry that I have to ask that here, but I haven't found a conclusive answer on the oracle page or in the internet. I've even been on the phone with a sales rep, but they couldn't help me neither.
What kind of Oracle Setups/licenses are you using for your development environments? We currently are using 10g XE which only has one significant limitation: the 4gb database size limit. Are there any other 'free' versions which don't have such limitations? And if not, what would be the most economic version/combination? The often have a hard user limit which are ridiculous low.
Thanks!
Cheers
Reto
PS. I'm not sure if I have to mention that: I'm not looking for any illegal solutions
Since it appears that there exists a production environment, the license for the software you download from OTN will almost certainly not be sufficient. Since it sounds like each developer has a local development environment, however, you should be able to make use of the Personal Edition. This is a relatively inexpensive ($460 perpetual/ $92 for a 1-year license plus support in the Oracle Store at the moment) version of Oracle that is intended to be used by a single developer on a local machine. It has all the functionality of the enterprise edition of the database.
You can download Oracle Database 11g (and most other Oracle solutions) from their website oracle.com.
All you need is to register for free, and download the application, you don't need any license if it is for personal use.
I am using Visual Studio 2008 C# and SQL for my development.
Which oracle version should i download? Oracle 10g?
Does it have a design interface like sql server mangement studio?
Will this distribution concept have a graphical tool which say "Hi, on which servers would you like to distributed the database and on what basis"?
Using a local application, when I connect to its server and try to enter or delete data not on that server, will the oracle DB management system transparently access other servers to get or insert data? Or will it produce an error?
In reverse order:
Oracle does not do distributed in the way you (seem to) imagine. It's not Voldemort or Cassandra. It's one database per server, unless you're talking about RAC: but RAC is shared everything, so it's transparent (but way complicated).
The nearest Oracle has to SQL Server Management Studio is, I guess, Enterprise Manager. But I suspect OEM is probably not as easy to use as its MSSQL counterpart.
If you have a free choice use 11gR2. Why wouldn't you not use the latest version?
Oracle does support one application using multiple databases. However, this is normally due existing (even legacy) databases providing some of the data for an application. You should not deliberately set out to have separate databases on multiple databases, because distributed transactions are slower, less reliable and harder to tune. Find out more.
If you want to have multiple servers for resilience or scalability then as I said before RAC (Real Application Clusters) is Oracle's solution. This is a different architecture from SQL Server's federated approach. Find out more.
"so this link thing is support by free
versions of oracle?"
There is only one free (as in free beer) version of Oracle, and that is the Express Edition (currently still 10g only). That edition does support Database Links. I suggest you read two related articles by Lewis Cunningham: one explaining about DB Links and the other on linking multiple XE instances.
Oracle 10g Express is a great starting point. You would then need the Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio package.
Although the database comes with a fairly basic web-based interface, you would fare much better using a proper tool as Oracle SQL Developer (it's free). It's possibly not as complete as SQL Server Management Studio in terms of what it graphically offers, but it's good enough.
The difference between connecting a database hosted on your local computer and one hosted 450 miles away usually boils down to correctly configure your connection strings. However, it will not ask you 'graphically'; in the C# application you will be creating, you'd have to configure that by the way of code. Oracle SQL Developer, on the other hand, will ask you kindly. :)
Your local application would operate over the database instances which you have set it up to do so. You could configure your application to connect to 3 (or more) different databases, and it's not that the database system will know, but that you would be the one managing the operation.
I need to build a simple, single user database application for Windows. Main requirements are independence from windows version and installed software. What technologies (language/framework) would you recommend? My preference for language is the Visual Basic.
EDIT: What about VB.Net and SQL Server Compact Edition?
I would recommend Sqlite. It's completely self-contained, and public domain so there are no license issues at all.
Single user or multi user?
For single user, the answer would be SQLite
For multi user (or multithread), try MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Since your requirement is a windows based application i would suggest that you go with sql server 2005 express edition which is a free tool, but with certain small limitations. you can upgrade to a bigger version when you go with a paid version.
There are other DB engines like SQL Lite or FireBird, choose them if the support and growth options they provide are good enough for you
Additionally, Visual Basic is eof lifed. VB.NET might be a better windows based platform currently. It would give a better platform / features to start with and when you want to expand the talent you have working on the project, i assume .NET talent might be more available than programmers who want to work with a dead language.
duplicate of What options are there for a quick embedded DB in .NET?
I'll repeat my answer from there:
"Or theres Esent, the built in database that exists in every copy of windows. Read about it here: http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2008/12/23/hidden-windows-gems-extensible-storage-engine.aspx" and http://www.codeplex.com/ManagedEsent
SQLite will work for a local desktop application. If you want several users, a few gigas of data, and multiple connections I would use mysql or Firebird.
http://www.mysql.com/
http://www.firebirdsql.org/
FireBird SQL server will be thing of choice. It can be used in both embedded and multiuser mode like traditional databases. It implements many of the SQL standards and has strong community base. It is available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS X, HP-UX
As mentioned, SQLite is a great single-user database. This page has VB/SQLite examples. Once concerns is that SQLite parses foreign key constraints, but does not enforce them. You can use this code to generate "foreign key triggers" for SQLite, thus gaining an easy to use database with FK constraints.
Depending on how demanding your database needs are, though, you might want to consider MS Access.
I used SQL Server Compact Edition. It's like sqllite. A single SDF file accessed using ADO.NET.
You can develop your application using Visual Basic .NET and manage you database (add tables, columns, constraints, etc...) using Visual Studio.
SQLite may be what you are looking for. http://www.sqlite.org/
Depending on your needs for the application.
You could use SQLLite which is a very nice database with no installation required.
You could also use Microsoft SQL Server: SQL Server Compact 3.5.
Both are free!
It's not quite clear from your post whether you want a web application or not.
For a web application, MySQL works effectively on the Windows platform. You also have nearly limitless options for development environment including, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Django, and .Net.
If you are looking at a desktop application, MS Access might be suitable ... incredible easy for simple applications.
Well, assuming you don't have any prior experience...
You need some kind of persistence storage (for example a database) and a client.
For the storage you could use almost anything. For example you could create your DB in MS Access and just ship it as a file, using ADO to access it.
Other options are MS SQL Express edition (comes pre-installed on some machines or could be installed for free) and plenty of open source databases like SQLite
For the client side you could not go wrong with VBScript and ADO (using OLE DB drivers). They come with every Windows installation since Dark Ages, you will have plenty of references/tutorials/answers online.
A drawback: no UI to speak of, so you'll have to build a command line interface (which was for a 'simple' application).
If you want to build a UI I would suggest using .NET WinForms. The overhead will be substantially bigger but .NET is now installed on all XP/Vista machines and even if it is not you could always install the framework with you application.
If you want to build application that can move to other pc easily,I prefer Microsoft Access it is small database easy to use and no need to install.It suites for application like Addressbook,mini crud system.
But if you want to develop enterprise database system you should use MySQL instead.
I do not understand what you mean with "independence form [...] installed software". You ever need at least the DBMS installed as well as one client or user interface.
I recommend using MS Access. It is easy and cheap for simple, single user tasks and rapid prototyping development. Only development version have to be bought ("normal" Access) to create DBs. Runtime version of Access 2007 can be downloaded free of cost from Microsoft Homepage - for using only the database you created.
Also it combines DBMS and GUI frontend in same tool.
Dare I mention MS Access...?
If you are looking for small footprint (up to a few MB) and easy deployment (end-user should only install your application to get it working), then your options are SQLite and Firebird embedded.
Of those two, I'd pick Firebird any time, because of it's full support for SQL (you can't, for example, drop a column in SQLite), ACID compliance, and ability to go client/server without any changes (just change the connection string from embedded to server) to the code if you ever decide to let multiple users work on the same database.
Not to mention that you can use full server to develop (which means your application and database administration tool can be connected to database at the same time).
I'm successfully using Turbo Delphi (free for commercial and no commercial use) + ZeosLib (zeos.firmos.at).
The only things you need to distribute with your .exe are the database client dlls (no need to install the client, just put the dlls in the same directory).
Would Kexi work?
I can recommend from personal experience "My Visual database"
free, no code, no sql, just drag and drop.
http://myvisualdatabase.com/
Best Option would be to create a Win32 native application using Delphi and use SQLLite as the database.
Reason being Delphi can produce native win32 applications without any other product being installed on the machine.