So, I'm gonna program a database!

[GilloD]

I love being charged with projects I know nothing about. Outside of dipping my toes in the FileMaker waters a few years back and some really cursory MySQL experience, I know nada about database dev,

Basically, it'll be internal to the company. It won't be super huge, it'll be a DB to track wholesale promos to distributors. It's a pretty simple worksheet, but it's been on paper until now and needs to be searchable and accessible.

I'm eyeing the OpenOffice Access equivalent- BASE. Has anyone used it? Should I take this to Filemaker or Access? What's best practices for this stuff?

[Robo]

Try to avoid redundancy (in regards to the information you're entering) and make sure all of your records use unique referential keys.  Cite these keys in any additional tables apart from the main one to keep everything linked and alligned.  That's relational database in a sentence.  And if it's going to be big, you might want to set up some indexes.  Other than that, you should be good.