MySQL 5.0

This is a free program that I love. You have to be a little bit of a geek to figure it out, but it's a lot more powerful than that piece of garbage, Microsoft Access. MySQL comes with some really good documentation to figure it out. It can be downloaded from
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html

I also recommend using the GUI Tools, they make life a lot easier and they also allow you to import your other databases, including Microsoft Access, to the MySQL platform.


Here's a screen shot of a database I created in about 2 minutes using the MySQL Query Browser:


One other nice feature is the Workbench (included in the GUI tools) that allows you to reverse engineer a database to create UML diagrams. This is a Crows Foot Notation of the Northwind Database I imported to MySQL from MSAccess using the Migration Toolkit:



Did I mention all of this is FREE? It's all open source and IT'S ALL FREE!