In a bit of a pickle here :)

[Larry goodman]

>If you don't need a relational model, why not consider ZODB/ZEO
>(http://zope.org/Wikis/ZODB/FrontPage)?  It's the distributed Python object
>database that underlies Zope.  I've used it successfully for a similar
>project.  ZODB has transactions/versioning, but client-server syncing is a
>trickier, application specific issue.
>
Ill have a look.  Sounds terrific.

>It should be easy enough to encrypt your sessions (thus allowing for secure
>authentication) by using something like AES.  If you control the server and
>the clients, SSL is overkill anyway.
>
Sounds great.  Thanks for the suggestions.