Distributing Jet database engine

[PeterH]

I have an application written in VB.Net that opens an Access database
(ie a Microsoft Jet 4 database mdb file). It does not use Access forms
or reports, so there is no need for users to have Access itself. I have
two questions.

1) Must my users must have the Jet 4 database engine? Or is its
functionality contained in the .Net Framework?

2) Jet 4 was distributed with Access 2000 and subsequent versions. Was
it distributed with other Microsoft Office products? If so, which ones?
(I am trying to determine how likely it is that my users will already
have Jet installed, since it is quite a big download.)

Peter

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[David]

Hello Peter,

On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 07:41:12 UTC, PeterH <no****@devdex.com> wrote:

I have an application written in VB.Net that opens an Access database
(ie a Microsoft Jet 4 database mdb file). It does not use Access forms
or reports, so there is no need for users to have Access itself. I have
two questions.

1) Must my users must have the Jet 4 database engine? Or is its
functionality contained in the .Net Framework?
Your customers will need the appropriate Jet Engine to access your
database files.

I do not know what .NET contains. I doubt it would contain the
Jet Engine.
2) Jet 4 was distributed with Access 2000 and subsequent versions. Was
it distributed with other Microsoft Office products? If so, which ones?
(I am trying to determine how likely it is that my users will already
have Jet installed, since it is quite a big download.)
Certain products require and install the Jet Engine. Microsoft includes
the Jet Engine as part of their MDAC package. The MDAC package is available
from Microsoft and (to my knowledge) still freely downloadable. I believe
the terms and restrictions agreement prefers that your customers download
the MDAC and install it rather than your installation include a copy.

There are various version of the MDAC. I don't recall what the latest
version is, perhaps 2.7 or 2.8. The Microsoft documentation will tell you
which version is the minimum that would be required for a Jet 4 database.

Google on "MDAC download" at Microsoft and you should quickly find the
download page and documentation.
Peter

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David

[PeterH]

Many thanks, David.

That is more or less what I feared. It means there is no way to
distribute my program reliably without a download of 20MByte +

Peter

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[David]

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 08:10:09 UTC, PeterH <no****@devdex.com> wrote:

Many thanks, David.

That is more or less what I feared. It means there is no way to
distribute my program reliably without a download of 20MByte +

Peter

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Ah, the joys of the Microsoft world. Nothing is free.
It could be worse, though. You could be based on MS SQL and
require a formal license for each user and have to upgrade
to the latest and greatest version every six months. I
save so much time by just using the Jet engine and not
worrying about the upgrade hell that isn't required for my
applications. I'd prefer a source code database engine,
but we're hopelessly tied to Jet for the time being.

Perhaps you could figure out a way to ship the latest MDAC
with your product or have the install get it for you. We
have one app that requires Adobe Reader and it does a terrible
amount of work to find and install Reader on machines that
don't have it. For some things, its best to tell the user
the pre-requisits and let them load them.

Good luck,

David