@ Lynn, Jeff and Michael,

Thank you for the passion and care that I can perceive in your messages, that I really appreciate.

I am certain that any valid professional would be worth thousands of dollars and we simply cannot afford it now. Given your reccomendations, we will try to make an effort but, should the cost prove impossible, we would be left with 2 alternatives:
- no DB at all or
- poorly conceived and designed DB with none of the paramount requirements that you all mention.

Our idea is to keep all valuable information on paper and emails, as we do today, sharing amongst ourselves what we need, when we need it and, in the meantime, conceive and develop a temporary DB to make experience and to learn from our mistakes. Unfortunately beggars can't be choosers!
🙂

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.