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What RAD environment or tool would you use for a small database-driven app?

I need to code a small record-keeping application for a small business in Windows and I'm considering programming it from scratch using .NET. However, I think that it might be overkill for such a common kind of program. It is mostly a CRUD application with simple arithmetic.

I'm tempted to go the MS Access way, but I find it a bit limiting and "unprofessional". Is there anything out there more flexible than Access (commercial or open source) but without the overkill of programming every single SQL query? I found RBase and Kexi. Is there anything else?

My requirements are:

  • Smallish-database (less than one gig)
  • 6 simultaneous users on a local network

There is no data to migrate, so any db will do.

What tool would you use?

Browsing at other Stack Overflow answers it seems like

Solution

  • Since you say it should be a .NET application, I'd recommend the following:

    • SQL Server Express for the database. It's free, but should you ever have to scale the application, you can upgrade to the full SQL server.
    • Maybe something like subsonic to automatically generate the data-access layer and domain model based on the database schema.
    • Build the application either using windows forms or asp.net