OK, I did some (more) digging and found this article: Let Users Customize Databases, by Ward Hitt. While it deals primarily with Visual Basic and Access databases, it should give you a good conceptual overview of what is possible.

A few other odds and ends that might be useful (or just interesting reading):

Dealing with Properties
Agile Database Tools, Sandboxes, and Scripts

Other phrases to search on would be "user centered design techniques" or "end-user computing".

HTH,