Database – Oracle DB emulator

Explore the Expect programing language.

Exploring Expect is the title of the O'Reilly book for doing just that.

"Written by the author of Expect, this is the first book to explain how this part of the UNIX toolbox can be used to automate Telnet, FTP, passwd, rlogin, and hundreds of other interactive applications. Based on Tcl (Tool Command Language), Expect lets you automate interactive applications that have previously been extremely difficult to handle with any scripting language."

Yes, it's 16 years old, here is the page for the language now http://expect.sourceforge.net/ with other docs, etc.

It's a small office. That sounds like datasheet import / report generation. I'd say don't bother with concurrency problems, high availability and such, but with how to integrate existent base. I don't think you need all the available SQL power more than you need good integration/migration tools.

My 2 cents is: go and see if the features of OpenBase meet your current requirements. If so, go with it. If you really know you need the SQL power of mysql or postgresql you can start using OpenBase as a frontend with either one as a backend. As far as I can tell, mysql/postgresql aren't exactly seen/used as office solutions so in your case you may not get all the help you need when asking for it on the community forums. I advise against using these directly for implementing office solutions. On the other hand I vouch for OpenBase to be used at least as a frontend, if not together with its "native" sql backend, hsqldb. You will be able to easily integrate current solutions and/or migrate existent data. OpenBaseis a good alternative to microsoft office solutions so I won't bother talking about the latter here.