I am a web developer and have very little widows forms development experience, and I want to find really good information on this topic before I start.
I am planning to build a windows forms application that will be delivered on a cd to users. The cd will install the application and I presume the database to the client machine. The client machines will not always have access to the internet. What are my options?
What databases can I use, can I use sql server express?
Am I right in going the windows forms route?
Can someone point me towards some really good information on this type of software development?
Thank you in advance.
If you have very little windows development experience, I would strongly suggest skipping WinForms, and move straight to WPF, or even out-of-browser Silverlight instead. WinForms is quickly being replaced by these two newer technologies, and there's no reason not to start learning them instead of WinForms at this point.
You can use SQL Server Express, but that may cause complications when deploying your application, if each user is to have their own database. You may want to consider SQL Compact Edition as an alternative.
See this article for more information.