ESENT tips and tricks

ESENT is powerful embedded database engine that is part of Windows. It used by the Active Directory, Windows Desktop Search, Windows Update and several other windows clients. Microsoft Exchange uses a version of the same code, appearing as ese.dll. The Esent API ships in the Windows SDK and is documented in the Windows SDK docs and on MSDN.  It's available in all versions of Windows from Windows 2000 and later (i.e. XP, W2K3, Vista, W2K8). The MSDN documentation covers the different API calls but doesn't always show how to put them together. Laurion Burchall, a developer on the ESENT team, writes a blog about ESE and ESENT, and wrote a great article on the Windows SDK blog, with a Hello World type sample to get you started: ESENT (Extensible Storage Engine) API in the Windows SDK.