System.Data.SQlite not showing in change data source of Visual Studio 2013

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2013 and it's up to date. I was in search of using a local database which doesn't require SQL Server to be installed on a client machine. I figured out that SQLite is the one that I should use, so I installed SQLite through NuGet. When I tried to create a data source from Server Explorer, I was expecting to see the System.Data.SQLite which was unfortunately not present.

All of the references and required files are included in my solution. I did all the steps, searched different forums and tried all but nothing worked. I also followed the steps that were present in Stack Overflow for the Visual Studio 2012 but none of them worked. What steps I should follow in order to use SQLite properly?

Answer 1

I had a similar problem where I installed the System.Data.SQLite packages from Nuget, but the 'System.Data.SQLite Database File' option would not be listed as a data source.

In order to fix this problem, I ran through some of the steps from this blog post by Brecht Carlier. I fixed the issue by uninstalling the package, going to the official SQLite downloads page, searching for the 32-bit Windows (.NET Framework 4.5.1) Setup executable, which is the one labeled:

This is the only setup package that is capable of installing the design-time components for Visual Studio 2013.

Then I ran the executable, re-installed the System.Data.SQLite package through NuGet, and rebuilt the project. Everything seemed to work after that.

The problem seems to be that even if you're on a 64-bit machine, you need to download the 32-bit version. Hope this helps.