Beginner's Questions

Hey, All,

I'm working on a project (for a friend and for self-education) and
want to learn a little more about what sorts of applications
PostgreSQL is used for. I'm currently looking at a single-computer
desktop application that may be scaled to a client-server model with
multiple desktop clients and a centralized server.

My database is quite small (only 13 lucky tables, though that may
expand a little) and will not hold a great amount of data. (There
will be at most records in the thousands for the single-user or tens
of thousands for the multi-user.) I will either use Java or C++ for
the project. I would run PostgreSQL as a child process.

Is PostgreSQL overkill for such a project? My other choices are to
go with a flat-file format or to use an embedded SQL server. The
reason to go with PostgreSQL are that I don't have to write as much
code, it's known to be reliable for what I'm doing, and it's known to
be reliable for what I might be doing. The reason to not go with
PostgreSQL is that it might be too much for a modest personal
computer; I don't know that the computers running this will even have
XP. (I'm not a MS Windows user, myself, unless I have to be. My
development boxes are a 1.1 GHz Athlon with 512 RAM with XP and a
dual-processor G4 with MacOS 10.4.)

Are there ballpark requirements for what such a database will need to
run?

Thanks!

Don