So many things that need to be decided....

[Ivan Voras]

Heather Stovold wrote:

> I still need to decide on a database........   I've really only used Access,
> and my SQL skills aren't that great.  It would also need to be free....

As many others have suggested, if you're comming from Access, SQLite or 
Gadfly would probably be good starting points, because

- they both store data as files in the filesystem (as Access does), so 
you don't have to maintain a database server
- they are easy to setup and use, there's lots of documentation on them.

My personal suggestion would be to go with SQLite because it's a 
standard database which can be used with large number of other tools and 
languages.

Keep in mind that such simple database systems have limits. Mostly, 
you'll encounter performance problems if you have multiple users writing 
data to the database at the same time (so if you're into web 
applications or business systems, use something more powerful, like 
PostgreSQL or Firebird).

As for report generating features, I don't know of any free report 
generators that are as easy to use like the one in Access (e.g. 
point-and-click). Same goes for GUI tools.