Im building a web application, which will be deployed for a small area (City) expect 20,000 or more records across 15 or so tables, for a trial period, if successful, it will be launch nationwide (NZ) maybe 200,000 or more records.

Im trying to determine which DBMS, I should use, I have a very limited budget, and don't think SQL server is in that picture.

Ive been looking at options and originally thought MYSQL would be a Good option, but have also tossed up the use of Postgres.

1. The Database, needs to be fast for inserting, updating and deleting, but its not likely I will use any stored procedures as I prefer to use the application layer.
   
2. It will also be likely that the project will be a success, and therefore I will at some stage have to migrate the DBMS to a more comprehensive, Scalable solution.
   
3. Im also using ASP/VB.NET so there needs to be good support language wise.

Any feed back welcome, but please justify your comments.

mysql or postgresql -- both are fast, and both will scale

or so they would have you believe, eh

i'm not suggesting that they aren't fast, nor that they won't scale -- just that i'm going more by what's on their sites than by actual firsthand experience

Yeah, what about host support, currently I might have to place the Application on someone else server? Is Postgresql supported at all, I've hada look but they all seem to be MySQL

There are hosting providers out there who can provide PostgreSQL, however you will probably find you pay a premium for it. MySQL is easier to get to grips with and doesn't require datatypes defining for stored procedures, although I suspect you're probably quite acqainted with datatypes having used .NET. Still it's a pain to debug...