HELP me choose a database server!

Greetings Database Experts,

I am currently finishing up a prototype quality control system for my place of work. Unfortuantely, the system is hacked and not engineered due the the ridiculous time constraints (20 days) to get the whole thing up and running. I have forced everyone in the organisation to acknowledge the fact that this is a PROTOTYPE system, and should be completely rewritten in the next twelve months.

I've gotten through to the people who count (those which control the money!) with the fact that we will be needing something more substantial to support an organisation of this size.

Currently the application exists in three versions for different sets of users, and is written as an MSAccess 2.0 application. All tables are stored in a single MDB database and reside on a Novell file server.

It is my goal to reengineer the application to be movable to an SQL server of some description to support the continued (and rapid) growth of the organisation. Multiple processor upgrades may also become necessary in the future (so an SMP operating system is required).

I have little to no experience in the area of client/server database systems and I need some advice on what sort of system I should chose as a back end. From what I have heard (and my own experience), Access will be fine for the user interface. What sort of server database software should I be looking at? What sort of operating environments is it available under? How does an NT solution stack up against an OS/2 solution?

Thanks very much for your time in answering any of these questions and giving me feedback. I realise that this sort of information would probably cost a lot if I were to contact a consultant. I will summarise any e-mail/posts and repost them.

Cheers,

David Connors                                  dave_at_splat.paxnet.com.au