I am currently determining the architecture for a rewrite of an existing retailed software product - moving from Smalltalk to C# .Net. It is to be a rich-client single-user desktop application. The architecture requires a database to store and manage complex relational information in conjunction with text documents. SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine seems an ideal architecture candidate
Unfortunately, the Desktop Engine does not seem to support full-text searches and alternatively the Standard Edition of SQL would cost more than the existing retail price of the application being redeveloped
I require information regarding whether it is possible to use full-text searches (which uses MS Search Service) using the Desktop Engine; or alternatively if there are any price effective licensing options (short of shipping SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition with every product). Worst case scenario would indicate using another component such as Lucene.Net for performing the full-text searching
thanks in anticipatio
Adam