Yeah, and I think sqlite is really comparable to this setup. Use Access to design the database (optional), and access (no pun intended) the jet database engine

Yeah, and I think sqlite is really comparable to this setup. Use Access to design the database (optional), and access (no pun intended) the jet database engine via ODBC,OLE-DB or DAO ..Jay! Code like it's 1999 :-) ... I remember the jet db engine offered at least transaction level READ_COMMITTED (in comparison to mysql's MyISAM) and "it was quite fast" until reaching about 1mio rows or so (of course, db design, index etc determines "fast", that was just a basic rule of thumb I remember)...