Hello all,

I've been searching and searching for a database that suits my needs but nothing seems to do the job, or atleast the way I have understood the system it doesn't work for me.
Pretty much my band and I have been using an Excel database stored on the OneDrive, from there i had another workbook that created set lists of from our database for us, alot of data in it like, Title, Artist, Instruments, Notes. It had automated scoring that after a certain amount of not being played would start to degrade the score, colour system all the good stuff.


Problem is Excel is becoming increasingly unstable with more and more data, recieving memory errors, plus I am looking at doing more complicated coding and it made sense that I make a proper program. I've used VB.net before and VBA is similar but you all know that.

So now I am translating the basic functions over, but I need to work out how I am passing data around before I can begin doing stuff with it of course. I have had a look at SQL it requires extra installation which i don't want, Access for what ever reason even though the full program is installed, it believes a .dll file is missing that allows the connection to visual studio, even though it isn't. I was set on running out of a .xml file but while it seems to work in an address book format, reading and writing programmly as a database didn't seem to be working.


I would like to be able to load the database in a few different ways. I have a TCP connection set up for a host/slave on the program i am making, so it needs to be accessable on high demand from multiple devices on the same network for when we are performing or practicing together. But at the same time we don't even live in the same town, so I was hoping to put the database on something like the OneDrive where multiple instances could access it, (using a timer and a time stamp of sorts to see if the database has been updated by someone else). So at the moment I believe the best one would be SQL and port forward. But my network doesn't portforward well, nor do I have a computer to dedicate as a server. Plus i would like to distribute the software later on as a all in one service, but i don't want people to have to go through the hassel of setting up there own server, so i want it to be intergrated.

I am aware this would mean alot more coding for me, but i think the outcome will be worth it. To sum up the program when we are performing will have 4 (in my case) clients that will be telling the host instance what song to load the settings for the song. Then when we are practicing individually have 4 instances of offline hosts accessing the database sometimes at the same time. And i'd like to make it as user friendly as possible. In my case i am in a band and a duo, so i would be apon load up choosing what database i want to use.

I know that is alot of information but from what i have seen in my searches the smallest of information could changes the type recommend greatly sometimes. And you can probably see why .xml files as a database made sense if it wasn't so clunky.

I learn best by reverse engineering, so if there is a demo project for visual studio that you know of somewhere that i can look at, let me know, but obviously any help at all would be much loved and of course let me know if you need more information, really just need a recommendation for what way to head.

Thanks in advanced

Bensley