Best way of saving data

Hi, I am writing a windows application that will be saving a lot of data, and I have designed a database for it in access. However when I go to distribute the application, won't having an access database attached as the backend allow users to just open it and view all the data?? I would really like to keep the data in it confidential. What's the best way of doing this?? Should I even just save the data, say as binary, to .dat files instead? If I do this then I take it I'll have to create datasets and tables in memory at the start to load all the data into. Would this be quicker than using a database?

Any help much appreciated...

Welcome to the forums. :wave:

Is this an internal application for your company only, or are you putting it on the web?

Hi, it's a windows application that I am doing in my own time that I will be putting onto the web when finished to be downloaded. It has a lot of data associated with it that I would like to secure if possible and get the fastest data access times, so I don't know if it would be best to use Access - I assume that most people can read/write to Access without downloading extra files/drivers - or SQL Express - but I assume additional files will be needed to access SQL express? - or use a binary file or something like that??

You could change the file extension, no need to keep it as MDB.... they would have to know it's an access DB and change it back to MDB in order to open it. Also, in order for them to open it directly (not using your app) they would have to have Access installed.

-tg

I would use a binary file.

If you put all your data into user defined structures (type), and arrays, you can access the data faster than a database. With a database you have an extra layer. BUT.... if you need to process the data (sorting, grouping, make reports... etc.) then a database will definitelly be better.

Yeah, I'll be doing a lot of sorting, reports, binding to data etc. so I suppose a database is the way to go... I could also then change the file extension as suggested and password protect it as well...

Access "password protection" is a joke. I don't even bother to save a program to break it, because it only takes a few minutes to generate the necessary data and write the program.

I'd encrypt the data, using whatever method you like, and change the extension. Those methods (even for a trivial encryption method) are much more difficult to break than Access' password.