Ann,

Sorry, I do not know about architecture list, please redirect me
there. This answer I will post here.

> Sorry, that came out sharper than I had intended. What I meant
> is, "why is the absence of a server process important?" There
> are lots of possible reasons - I'd like to know what problem we're
> solving...

We have an application that needs a storage with fast lookup by ID,
BLOBs and few other simple SQL operations. This application takes
input from one source, preprocesses it, and stores in database. It
also accepts network connections and delivers parts of data in
database to clients over the wire (PDA with network connection).

This application is quite small (we have some cool C++ guys that
tweak bits in the code :) ). We are looking for the possibility to
provide a desktop version of this application for a mass market to
target an offline scenario. This application will detect a PDA or
phone on serial port, extract some data from the database and send
same data as before over the serial connection to PDA or phone.

Keyword here is "desktop version for mass market". Installing server
on each desktop is not the best thing we can do:

a) each desktop that happens to have a copy of that application
listens on 3050; potential security flaw.

b) there might be a conflicts with network configuration (some other
application listening on 3050).

c) no administrator rights on WinNT/Win2k machine.

d) ... (I think I can find some other issues, like 'what if they have
IB there', etc.)

So, in my opinion, embedded database (DLL or built-in) will fit our
needs better. If that would be a Java application, I would select
JDataStore (really impressive database)), but that's a native code.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Roman Rokytskyy