My experience with .NET so far is only using MS SQL Server through the Mere Mortals framework, so I don't delve into the depths of ADO.NET too often.

I am writing a small utility winform app that will only be run by the end-user about three or four times a year, importing 500-1000 records. I don't want to store the records as text or XML because that seems inefficient and I need the querying functionality of a database to offer users the ability to pull simple subsets.

I want to know what is built into .NET. Can I simply create an empty MS Access database file, have my installer install it, and then access it through ADO.NET? Because the program will only be run occasionally, it doesn't need to be super fast. It will only be run to create quarterly reports.

I also like Access because my users will be an MS Office shop, so it would probably be an easy format for them to find other uses for.

If I can't use an empty Access file, does anyone have any other recommendations?

Thanks.