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>Would this mean installing MSDE separately on the machine and accessing it as a service from C# or can you bundle the MSDE engine into a .NET project installer?
Yes if it only needs to run on this one machine - do it manually and you have less hassles<g>.

>I didn't have much luck finding samples for accessing MSDE from C#. Is it just another connection >string like any other database, only local? Is it possible to query data off the main DB server >directly into MSDE or must .NET download it then upload it into MSDE?
Yes and no: you can use replication for copying the whole database or if you can eliminate a large chunk of the data you can query. Look at your data, hardware, performance needs and budget and pick the best strategy.

>We haven't decided if the report will be run on one client machine, a small group of client machines, or remotely on a session server near the database.

Well, decide that first <g>.

my 0.02 EUR

thomas