John,

>ADO .NET does have a local engine component. My suggestion - start with the defintion of what a data engine is and work from there.

There is not much to discuss here. a Local database engine should have a DML preferably supporting SQL. ADO.NET does not qualify to this rule. The fact that ADO.NET offers some methods of filtering and relating object properties in a collection does not make it a database engine.

We've to agree to disagree.

Walter,