Being someone who hasn't touched a database since writing some turnkey "systems" in dBaseIII back in the mid 80s(!) I'm not the one to make any recommendations about databases. However.... I've been banging on to a educational organisation for some time about bailing out of MS, but they are hooked on Access for a few users. The last time I looked at access (casually) would be err 1995 or so... but how does Adabas compare to Access? If I can get them onto StarOffice or OpenOffice (OO lacks a database incorporated doesn't it?) the way is clear for a linux migration at some point in the future. Does Adabase have a nice pretty windows interface? Can it read in Access databases? What qualities does it have that recommend it over Access? Apart from price :-) and the ... well can we still claim the ethical dimension? What other databases are there out there common to both Windows and Linux x-windows that are low cost/free, and highly competent? Ta muchly