First let me admit I have not done any serious development with either since the early days of this milennium..................although I did a hell of a lot just prior to that (Y2K compliance stuff)

You can use simple RDBMS like MS Access or Paradox (Borland?). Then you can move up a league into MYSQL which is much more powerful, robust and flexible.

Oracle is a stand alone system that is attractive because of the proprietary reporting and management tools that come with it or are at least available off the shelf. These can be the simple enquiry and report generators that you would give to the users, through to full blown applications development tools.

If I were to go for MYSQL these days I would certainly look at Business Objects as a stablemate. On a lower level BO also have Crystal Reports.

Just a few thoughts