Database on a server without installation?

Right now I am having a customer who is working with several businesses. He is working with their data but is not allowed to directly access their databases. We thought of using SQLite or SQL CE and storing a copy/part of the original database as a file on a network share. Now the problem is that SQL CE is not supporting it and SQLite highly recommends not to do so.

First of all the performance is a huge problem, since our customer is working with a lot of data (up to several gb). The second problem is that SQLite has problems (actually the underlying os functionality for file locking is the problem) with concurrent usage of the database, when it is stored on a network share. I did a lot of r开发者_运维百科esearch on that topic and many people say that it is just a matter of time that the database gets currupt.

Does anyone know a better solution to that problem or a workaroung which lets me use SQLite? It does not need to be a file based database, as long as nothing needs to be installed or run on the server.

Thanks, David.

If you are going to store data on a network share and have concurrent users accessing it you are going to need a db that can handle concurrent access. MS Access will quickly die if under concurrent access as will SQL Lite.

SQL Server Express is free and works very well. PostgreSQL as suggested by Maxim is an open source full featured db that will do the job very well but may be overkill.

You could also look at Redis ... fast lightweight in memory no sql db that also has capability to persist to file.

You can try PostgreSQL. It is very easy to configure, and is rather reliable. It also support server export/import options.

And any of this makes sense, if you client is able to get his hands on an exported database somehow.