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Why is a Visual Studio 2005 Developer Looking for a SQLite Driver for OpenOffice.org?

Now that my actual desktop runs two virtual machines, my actual desktop experience is that of a user who does not have Visual Studio installed and available. Visual Studio is installed on one of my virtual machines. This means when one of my Visual Studio solutions is deployed to my actual workstation, new problems arise. Here’s the latest:

  • gacutil for .NET 2.0 is not in %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\. I never noticed this for years! According to something on the Internet, it was a mistake when it was released for previous .NET Framework distributions. This means that SQLite can’t be deployed casually to my actual desktop without ‘cheating’ and sneaking out SDK files that Microsoft does not define as “redistributable.”

  • When you try to install System.Data.SQLite on a machine without a Microsoft IDE it will not show up in the GAC. When the app.config method was tried on my machine my application still could not connect to SQLite.Why all of this effort? SonghaySystem.com is running on a SQLite database—right now. It would be great to edit the SQLite data without a Virtual Machine with Visual Studio running. Another alternative is to use my Linux Virtual machine and OpenOffice.org connected directly to (an offline mirror/copy) the SonghaySystem.com SQLite database. This idea introduced new obstacles:

  • There is a native OpenOffice.org SQLite driver, sqlite-sdbc-driver-0.1.0, but the low version number should speak for itself: it’s not ready for my prime time.

  • The lovely, campy OpenOffice.org 2006 “Summer of Code” introduces the need for a “Native SQLite driver.” This is not a ticket to instant gratification.

  • There is something that can be done with unixOdbc, SQLite and OpenOffice.org. But this also is not a ticket to instant gratification.The best bet when we must gamble is to just do this thing in PHP (with YUI/AJaX). So let’s do this thing in PHP. What’s really sad is that you can find me bragging about my Windows forms SQLite solution (using the WebBrowser control in the kintespace.com interview with Paul Prescod). You see what I get for bragging?

rasx()