What a RealProgrammer uses.

What MicrosoftAccess isn't after you've worked with it for a number of years and reached its limits.

Oracle, SqlServer, Informix, stuff like that.

Don't get me started about dBase, Paradox or the BorlandDatabaseEngine <shudders>

-- DanNovak

Why? what have they done to annoy you? Does anyone know what InterBase is like? 

I think open source InterBase is a top contender among the open source products.

{It is a matter of the right tool for the job. The BigIron databases have more scalability, more features, etc., but they can also be expensive and tricky to administer. As far as scalability, dBASE and related dialects can kick Access's ass. Microsoft purposely didn't fix flaws in Access because they fealt it would cut into SQL-Server sales. However, the ExBase dialects competed against each other and third-party scaling tools such as AdvantageDatabase rose up. ExBase is probably the most powerful Wintel file-server-based database tool family there is as far as scalability.}

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I don't know why you have put BorlandDatabaseEngine in the same category as desktop databases. It is a connectivity layer that can connect to a variety of desktop and client-server (i.e. real) databases. In its day, it was as good as ODBC. I wouldn't use for new projects today.

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See also: DesktopDatabase, NimbleDatabase, BigIronDatabase