My company's users need to be able to work with a database while offline, and some of these users do not have MS Access (which we used in the past). I figure I could deploy SQL Server Express 2005 to all users since it is free and build a VB application to work with the local DB instance on the users' machine.

I have a lot experience using VBA in MS Access & database programming in general (Oracle, SQL Server, etc.), but I'm fairly new to standalone VB applications. The first thing I want to do is build a simple concept model to make sure my plan will work:

Create a installation package on a CD that will:
1) Install .NET 2.0 if necessary (I assume this is necessary if they will run SQL Server Express, right?)
2) Install SQL Server Express
3) Create the data structure in SQL Server necessary for my VB application
4) Install my VB application

Is this the best way to meet my users needs? Any other ideas?

Does anyone know of a good resource where I could get some general knowledge on deploying VB with SQL Server Express?

Can anyone provide specific information on how to execute the above tasks?

Thanks in advance.