Mr. DD, you might find it worthwhile spending half-an-hour browsing through the previous posts in this very section of the forum (ie, Forum – Maintenance - Biomed Databases).
All this stuff has been gone over time and time again, and you'll find that various parties have fierce loyalties to various software packages. Some of the package vendors are sponsors of this website too, so people's views are not always, shall we say, completely objective.
For what it's worth, my oft-stated personal view on this topic is that “home-grown” is always best, with the caveat that it all takes a lot of time. But at least you then remain in full control of the design, implementation, and evolution of your database(s), and can modify (tweak, or whatever) at will. Any of the proprietary system vendors will promise great works, at great cost, but you will never get the “perfect system”. You pays yer money and yer takes yer choice.
I have been told so many times that “there's no such thing as the perfect design”, that it's almost become a catch-phrase. However, I usually turn that on its head and reply “if you're not seeking perfection, why carry on experimenting”?
