[Solved] Is an SQL database the way to go?

tinwhiskers

I'm writing a series of programs in VB.net that do design calculations for various forms of heat exchangers. There is a lot of property calculations that are done in common between many of the programs. Specifically some fluid property calcs(viscosity, density) and calculations of the materials the tube is the heat exchanger(stress v temp curves). The goal here is to be able to add a new material or fluid to in a single location, and have it instantly accessible to all instances of the various programs. Is some sort of database (SQL) the best way to go about this?

bowen

That's pretty much your only option short of a networked file share with a flat file with proper read/write techniques.

:tc&dr; sql is the best and easiest choice

ashridah

If you need to manage concurrent access to the data, particularly concurrent updates to the data? SQL is absolutely a reasonable solution, provided you can structure your data well, and you implement it to maintain data integrity (via ACID, etc)
SQL has the added bonus that you don't need to deal with network file locking issues, etc.
That said, a dependency on sql is much more administrative overhead, and can get fairly heavy, particularly if you use some of the entity frameworks available (ado.net EF for instance)

Doc

If the apps are just reading the new liquids and stuff and not ever writing to the shared data, and all the updates to the shared data are being done by one process/person, consider just hosting everything you need in an XML file or something, and have the apps download it.

If the instances of the programs want to update the data, then a DB is a reasonable solution.

Ruckus

It's also probably the cheapest, as you can use SQLExpress 2008 for free as long as you stay within it's limitations.

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/express.aspx

Doc

Again, people here are advocating SQL if you need to do updates to the file from these other machines.
If you just need to read data, there's no reason to add the overhead of SQL.

tinwhiskers

Thanks for the help. The files will not be updated through the programs(should have been clear on that), so XML seems like a much easier solution.