Hidden Windows Gems: Extensible Storage Engine
Did you know that Windows came with an embedded database?
Did you know that this embedded database is the power behind Active Directory & Exchange?
Did you know that this is actually part of Windows' API and is exposed to developers?
Did you know that it requires no installation and has zero administration overhead?
Did you know there is a .Net API?
Well, the answer for all of that is that you probably didn't know that, but it is true!
The embedded database is called Esent, and the managed library for this API was just released.
This is an implementation of ISAM DB, and I have been playing around with it for the last few days. It isn't as nice for .Net developers as I would like it to be (but Laurion is working on that).
I think making this public is a great thing, and the options that this opens up are quite interesting. I took that for a spin and came up with this tiny bit of code that allow me to store JSON documents:
https://rhino-tools.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/rhino-tools/branches/rhino-divandb
It is not done, not nearly done, but the fact that I could rely on the embedded DB to do so made my life so much easier. I wish I knew about that when I played with Rhino Queues, it would have made my life so much simpler.