I wondered what everyone things is a good database with a lot of life still in it for developing and holding a new application and company’s data.

We are about to start a complete redevelopment of our system. Aiming to remove the legacy code and develop the system entirely for a new small business which will be coming into place next year. This system may well replace our current older pick system when/if we get it all up and running

We as a company have developed in SQL, MUMPS, DB2 and a few other databases. We have a core of good VB,C,C++,Pick,Delphi and a few other languages, which our programmers know.

As we are to start from afresh we are looking to pick something cheap but scale able up to from 5 to the 50 users we plan within the first 4 years.
We need something which will last, we can get programmers in to work on, could replace our current 150 user system if it all goes well, and we do not need to get a complete brand new set of programmers in to deal with.

What do people think?

Depending on your environment I would suggest MS SQL Server. I have been developing applications with it as the back end DB for 18 months now and I have been very pleased with its performance and cost. While it pains me to recommend something from Microsoft the learning curve on the administration side is so negligible and the cost compared to Oracle or DB2 make it the only sane option in a Windows environment.

Now if you are not locked into a MS environment I have read a lot of positive things about IBM Websphere and DB2 on Linux. A couple of bonuses here: you're not locked into MS or Intel for that matter, everything is Java based and just about as easy to use as MS.

Hope this helps,

John

You can also consider application development based on ODBC or JDBC standard. It allows you to replace one database with any other which is compliant with one of standards mentioned above. This approach offers is more flexible but also needs more efforts to customize your application for different databases.
Regards
Bogdan

Thanks for your views.

We have been locked into the MS circle but I think as we now have the oportunity we might go for a Linux based server.

why dont you try using some java rdbms with ODBC connectivity i suppose they are more affordable and easy to deploy. also they have good scalibility. there r many available in market u can try on google