Which C# / .NET free or standard bits and pieces do I need to make a simple Windows desktop app backed by my database?

Question

I'm coming from a Java / web background with no C# experience and I want to write a prototype C# / .NET desktop app to run against my existing DB2 database. The idea is that the prototype should use libraries and tools which are suitable for scaling up to full production and should be standard and free.

Of the top of my head, the two biggest things I need are:

• an IDE
• a GUI toolkit / set of components
• a JDBC equivalent and/or possibly a full blown ORM system

What are my options? Note I don't mind paying for full blown Visual Studio in the long run, but for now everything needs to be free, including the IDE.

Answer 1

an IDE

Visual Studio Express

a GUI toolkit / set of components

WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) / WinForms

a JDBC equivalent and/or possibly a full blown ORM system

ADO.NET

There are many free ORMs for .NET and I would direct you here to read up on that:

NHibernate, Entity Framework, active records or linq2sql

One key question you need to answer is which version of the .NET Framework are you going to use? .NET 3.5 SP1 has been around for a while. .NET 4.0 is due for official release this month.

Answer 2

Visual Studio Express is free, and should provide most of what you need.

I'm not sure about ORM stuff. I don't think it has the ORM system that full VS has, but I hear people mention NHibernate a lot, which I've always assumed is some free and/or open source solution.

Answer 3

You can download Visual Studio Express and SQL server Express

Then you have to choose a GUI (WinForms, WPF, ASP.NET) and a DAL/ORM (DataSet, Ado Entities, 3rd party)