My company has a database system running on Mac OSX Filemaker Server 6. We need to plan for future development of the system and need to decide whether to stick with Filemaker and pay our current developers to move the system to version 7 or scrap the system and redo it in another database system. We don't know much about databases, so we're researching our options, and I would like to ask for your advice in this.

Our current system is a highly customized/personalized database with about 7 or more years of development invested in it. It handles a variety of services including accounting data, recording of customers' personal info, storing of receipts for sales transactions, reservations for rooms like in a hotel, etc. It is heavily scripted. The user interface is not at all intuitive or user friendly because this is not an area where our developers excel. The total size of the files in the database is about 1.2 GB. The files are remotely accessed off of our Apple XServe by up to 20 Mac OS9 and OSX workstations (mostly G4 systems) simultaneously at our place of business.

We hear from our Filemaker developers that moving to version 7 will be necessary sooner or later and will be a huge job. And they tell us migrating our system to the newer version will be problematic because it involves migrating a live database to a new system and because Filemaker is changing a great deal from version 6 to 7, becoming a truly relational database whereas it wasn't before.

So we're wondering what to do next. Here are some options that occur to us:
1. Should we go ahead and stick with our current developers and migration to Filemaker 7, or
2. should we delay the move to Filemaker 7 as long as possible until (hopefully) the migration process is sorted out better by the Filemaker community so it's not so difficult and expensive for us, or
3. should we seek a new outside development firm to produce a better system with a more user friendly interface in a better-established enterprise database system (and if so, which one would be appropriate?), or
4. should we hire somebody with the skills to produce a new database system in-house so we can pay them regular staff salary instead of usual developer rates?

We need to know cost guesstimates of these different options as well as pros and cons and other considerations. I don't really even know where to get started researching all this other than posting here so if you have advice on that question as well it would be helpful.

Thanks a million!
-Les