I'm trying to access a database which is presently saved in .cds format (which I believe is a TClientDataSet) from within my programme written in VB.Net. The reason being, is that the programme I am writing uses the same database as another programme. Both programmes will never being running at the same time, and it is a read-only operation so I could potentially duplicate the database and convert the database to an SQL-compatible format, but obviously this isn't a tidy solution.

Is there anyway that I can directly read data from the .cds file with VB.Net? It seems like this would be something that is not too complex and wouldn't be too different from just reading a .csv file.

Cheers.