Al,

Thank you for your reply.

I have absolutely no SQL backend in mind--since our clients will have to purchase this part I would appreciate 2 recommendations: 1) the best + it's high price and, 2) a very good on and it's more reasonable price (reasonable price to me would be under a couple of hundred per workstation + several thouand for server license).

The clients we have need 27/7 uptime; have dozens of tables with 1 million or fewer records each, need to have at max 200-300 workstations banging it at any one time (although the majority of clients will have 50 or fewer workstations).

For the development side, what should I install on a server in my office that will allow me to send my compiled application to a client without change? Or if I have an open source product such as MYSQL on my server and my client has an Oracle or Microsoft product--will the compiled application work without change (is it just connection strings and parameters that need to be changed is what I am asking here)?

I cannot stress enough that price has nothing to do with it, quality is the deciding factor. A client pumping countless orders per hour into the system loses far more than the cost of SQL if he/she's down.

Thank you again.

Kind regards,
Derek