Databases in offline software?

I'm primarily a web developer, currently learning C and planning on going into C+开发者_开发技巧+ in a year or so when I feel absolutely confident with C (Note: I'm not saying I'll be a master at C, just that I'll understand it in a fair amount of depth and will retain it properly rather than forgetting it when I see a new language).

My question is, how are offline/networked applications written with database functionality? I've built many-a database driven website in PHP and MySQL and would like to know how to use databases with my C projects - a lot of the applications I have the desire to write rely more on content management rather than processing data as such. What database formats are available to me? What should I be looking at to build a simple contact database for example?

Thanks in advance.

I'd suggest SQLite for file-based database. Mongo is pretty awesome too if you run it locally but it is still networked.

For a small application SQLLite might be a good option for you - it is part of your application and not dependant on other software but as a database is fairly weak (No triggers, no stored procedures afaik).

If you are looking for something more substantial (especially when it involves multiple users) you should be looking for MySQL or SQLServer. These can be accessed directly from their respective API's or via some kindof common mediator such as ODBC.

Your question is really very open, much application software depends on relational database technology at some level but the OS and the required task ussually dictate the best choices.

Going the SQL route with offline applications in C is not straightforward. Whereas the database storage brings in advantages, in terms of reliability e.g., it adds conversion steps during the save/load of your data, simply by using SQL.

The question is why would you want to create SQL commands as character strings to load/save the data that is treated as binary in your program, and that you can store as binary directly in your system local storage? It costs!

On the other side, if you already know SQL well, then you'll only have to learn about an (there are several) API to access a database (SQLite, MySQL ...) from C to get started.