Selecting Database tools

[Smartbomb]

I have some questions about database software that I'm hoping the Revolution community can help me answer.

I'm developing a business database application that is intended to operate in a workgroup scenario with 10-100 clients, max ~5000 clients. It's intended to be a desktop application at first - it will have a finance component, and I'm expecting that CFOs are not going to be crazy about having their financial info floating around on the internet.

I'd like some suggestions on which database environment would be best for this product. I've already built many of the tables and layouts in Filemaker and using FM Migrator as has been suggested in other threads on this board, so I'm looking only to work within the options offered by Migrator.

Important criteria for me include security, reliability, ease of administration, cross platform compatibility and ability to someday offer a web-based interface for a portion of the solution. It will probably need to run on a Windows-based server, only because many of my prospective customers are small shops without sophisticated networks. Ideally it could also run on a MacOS based server too but this is not critical, as Macs nowadays can pretty much talk to anything. For the client app, I will be developing separate Mac and PC interfaces that conform to Mac's "Aqua" and Windows User Experience Guidelines, but the underlying software will be the same.

Cost I guess is also a concern - I would like the ability to deploy this solution without greatly adding to it's cost. I'm entering a market dominated by companies that only offer sprawling, extremely expensive solutions. Part of the way I will differentiate myself in the market is to offer a feature-rich, easy to use solution that is both affordable to small shops and scalable for when they grow big.

Reliability and ease of administration is also a significant concern. The product should run well, be easy to set up and maintain, if that exists. It will be hard enough supporting my own product, I don't want to have to then support someone else's junk system or get hamstrung by an unsupported, open source system.

Someday portions of this solution should be available via a secure internet connection. I'd like to select a system that will make it easy to do that in the future, but for now the product will live on a server in someone's closet and will only serve data to local clients.

I'm thinking SQL Server would be a good place to start, but what do you all think?

Thanks for reading all this and I hope you all have a great day!

-Greg