Communicating with database

Question

I am writing an small membership application.  The program will probably run an a single machine but I need to way to allow any user that logs on to access the underlying database.  I have heard that I could implement this feature through a windows service and use remoting.  Could anyone give me a head start on this issue?  BTW the program wil be distributed via CD-ROM so the installation needs to be as simple as possible.