A comment on my post about the SQL/e announcement said it sounds a lot like SQLite . The subject warrents a separate post. SQLite is a great embedded database. It's free, open source, small, fast, ACID compliant , and frequently updated. SQLite is an ideal embedded database provided you don't care about...

VS.NET 2003 is about two years overdue for SP1. If you don't want to wait until June (or thereabouts), you can apply to download it early through connect.microsoft.com . In case the word "Beta" gives you the shivers, remember that SP1 is mostly a rollup of hotifxes that have been out for years. When...

Summary : Last.FM is cool, but their player desktop application is pretty horrible. MyLastFM is the beautiful player that Last.FM deserves. myLastFM has always been free, but now it's better than ever and open source . What's Last.FM ? Last.FM is difficult to describe. The best way to understand it is...

I blogged about the DevAge Source Pack this past summer when it was in Beta 1. The DevAge Source Pack 1.0.0.0 has just been released now - download it and try out the demos . The SourceGrid 3 is the star of the Source Pack. It's a full featured Winform grid control with sophisticated features like virtualization...

Cool connection string generator macro from John Conwell : Speaking of useful macros, this is one I've used for a a few years and thought might be usefull. It calls the ADODB Data Link Properties dialog (shown below). After you go through the dialog picking your data source, database, and connection...

RSS.NET is an open source class library which reads and writes RSS reeds. The project is still technically in beta and has never officially released a build, but a lot of applications are using it . I've been using it for a while and am very happy with it, but it has been a little disappointing to see...

Summary: SQLite is a great, free, embedable database. It's fast, tiny, and reliable, and has some cool features like support for NTFS compression of the database file. It's multithreaded, but its coarse locking can be a problem. I first read about SQLite over at EggHeadCafe researching ASP.NET database...

PureComponents NicePanel is free with registration . Includes a lot of nice design elements for data entry forms, including: Gradient backgrounds Rounded corners Textbox focus background colors Simplified captioning - can pull captions from Tag property of input controls rather than requiring separate...

DevAge 's SourceGrid 2.0 is a great control - full featured, extensible, and some advanced features like virtualization and compact framework support. Unlike many Winform controls, this isn't just a .NET wrapper over a Windows Common Control - it's a new control, written entirely in C#. Also nice - it...

On Greg's say so , I tried out DPack 2.0 . I don't know how I missed the 1.0 release, but I'm very impressed. This one is a keeper. DPack is a free VS.NET 2003 / 2005 addin that includes: Numbered bookmarks (improved in 2.0) Runs fine for non-admin users (new in 2.0) Solution Statistics - lines of code...