First, if you are going to keep using Excel, I would say, this is not just serious. This approach gives you enough trouble but still keeps you locked with a proprietary, non-free product. I can imagine two opposite approaches: you could use some home-backed storage system (not 3rd-party at all) or the solution based on some RDBMS and client-server (but it still can be free). The solution with Excel is the worse one. It is not designed to be a database, it provides no integration, not support. Do be serious and get to database solution.
You have a good deal of choices. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_databases[
^].
With VB.NET, you can use ADO.NET. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ado.net[
^],
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa286484.aspx[
^].
See also this CodeProject article:
Using ADO.NET for beginners[
^].
Still, you can use files for storing and loading data models with limited volume of data (such as configurations). This approach is good because you don't need any 3rd-party component. The best way is using
Data Contract. See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733127.aspx[
^].
I advocate this approach in my past solutions:
How can I utilize XML File streamwriter and reader in my form application?[
^],
Creating property files...[
^],
deseralize a json string array[
^].
—SA
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