At work, I am currently working on a project that is very very similar to that which you have described (although I am working with a much smaller database and probably much fewer users). I have two or three databases that I have to interface with, plus an internal e-mail system, a future employee hours accounting system, and God knows what else.

Because my project is not intended to be high-end where performance is going to be a major issue, I opted to hack things out in Perl, using CGI, DBI, and PostgreSQL.

The advantages, I have found, to this approach are as follows.

• I can hack things up pretty quickly
• I can isolate frequently used subroutines into libraries, making for easier maintenance
• Should we decided to move over to a different database, my code will not require a major overhaul to keep working
• If management want new features, they can be added in pretty quickly
• HTML templates allow you to isolate your middle-ware code from your front-end. This makes updating the front-end a relatively painless task

I will admit that the Perl/DBI/CGI approach is not entirely perfect.

• CGI is noticeably slow unless you use mod_perl (that is if you are also using Apache)
• DBI is quirky and can be confusing
• It's easy to write shit code

In your case, I honestly think that if you went the Perl/CGI/DBI route, in combination with mod_perl, you would have a pretty kick-ass system. It will be versatile, and can accommodate *any* changes or modifications that management want to throw at it. There is nothing that it can't do.

Although I would say to you that if you are working with a huge database which will have a lot of processing done on it by many users, you may need to consider porting your system over to C at some point, depending on whether or not you notice serious performance deficiencies. I have never seen any bench marks to compare C-based CGI applications and mod_perl/CGI applications, so I am only speculating with regards to this performance issue.

You may also want to look into PHP. I have never used it so I can't say as to how well suited it is to this task.

If you want to discuss the Perl//CGI/DBI route further, mail me at wintrowski@yahoo.com and I can further relate to you my experiences.

Wintrowski