Advantage Database Server is free for up to two local server licenses. It has a small footprint and is more or less completely documented in a single paperback book, yet it has a dot net provider and lots of medium weight capabilities such as transactions, replication, triggers, and debuggable sql scripts. It also has a lot of backward compatibility with xbase data. http://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/advantagedatabaseserver[^]