Best Design options for client side database access

[heli_doc]

I'd like to access a database that is on the client side via Javascript and was wondering how to best go about this. I was thinking it may work to use Ajax to call a C# data application, but wondered if that would be most efficient. I suppose PHP would be another alternative, but I prefer working in C# if I can. Thanks!

[niche]

Viola! http://w3schools.com/php/php_ajax_intro.asp

[justsomeguy]

You won't be able to use ajax to send a request to the user's filesystem without changing browser settings. You can set up a web server on the client and send ajax requests to that but you'll need to change security settings to allow your browser to send cross-domain ajax requests.

[heli_doc]

I know I can get at the data I want via C#, but not sure how to get the data to JavaScript. I'll look into a client-side web server, which I hadn't thought of before.

[niche]

Please excuse me. I missed that "client side" ref. What kind of info is supposed to be the user's database?

Edited December 7, 2012 by niche

[davej]

I'm guessing you are talking about a standard MSSQL Server or MySQL database on the client side. You may know that HTML5 offers a client-side SQL database API but this has no connection to standard databases. You might look into using a signed Java Applet. HTML5 can also talk to local files so maybe it could use files to communicate with a desktop program.