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I want to build a simple program that searches through a local database and returns a list of results. Essentially the program will be a searchable archive. This will be my first project of this type and I'm looking for some advice.

Fast reading of the database is important. Writing can be slow. There will be at most a few thousand records, and most records will probably contain less than 3 kb in text. Records should be flexible when it comes to their fields. Some records will have the field "abc", others will not. The number of fields per record may vary.

Should I simply write my data structures in C++, and then serialize them? Does it make sense to use an existing (lightweight) database framework? If so, can you recommend any that are free and easy to use and preferably written in modern C++?

My target platform is Window and I'm using the Visual Studio compiler.

Edit: the consensus is to use SQLite. Any recommendations as to which of the many SQlite C++ wrappers to use?

A.B.
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    You might want to check out [SQLite](http://www.sqlite.org/). – Some programmer dude Nov 08 '13 at 09:48
  • Certainly, go with SQLite. [Read here why](http://stackoverflow.com/a/14700226/1734130). – mvp Nov 08 '13 at 10:07
  • Re your edit: Personally I just use the C interface from C++. See this question: [What is a good OO C++ wrapper for sqlite](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/120295/what-is-a-good-oo-c-wrapper-for-sqlite) – User Nov 09 '13 at 07:05

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As commented by @Joachim, I would suggest SQLite. I have used it in C++ projects and it's straightforward to use. You basically put two files in your project sqlite3.c and sqlite3.h and then start coding to the interface (read the last paragraph of http://www.sqlite.org/selfcontained.html). You don't have to worry about configuring a database server. It's fast and lightweight. Read about transactions and SQLite if you need to speed some operations up.

User
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