some questions about PostgreSQL in general

hello everybody,

i'm posting this on the novice group, because after about a week of
lurking, pgsql-general looks to me more like a pgsql-deep-magic :).
anyway, any reactions / comments / tips are welcome!

my company uses at the moment a Clipper application with foxpro tables,
homemade, it's about 5 years old and has constantly been in development
(innovation, extension, bugfixes). the db is rather small (500mb), but
the functionality is complex (in terms of relations, also it's client-
server with one central database + read-write replica's to several
notebooks)

we have decided to go for a complete new platform and after looking at
Oracle (too expensive) and some existing solutions (not flexible
enough) we want to go for a *nix (Redhat, Debian or OpenBSD, testing
will be done on Redhat 7.2, maybe when Woody awakens i'll switch) and a
postgreSQL db. the front-end isn't decided yet, but we have decided to
drop the replication and let the notebooks make a dial-in connection,
so PHP or JDBC would seem the obvious choice. the database should also
be able to either hold a lot of office documents as BLOBs or contain
links to the files themselves, which are located on a netware 4.11
server. the client machines are win95 workstations, but HTTP access
should also be possible.

the db is the core of our business so it should be very stable and also
very secure, because we work with medical data.

my guess would be that postgreSQL is ready for the job, is this
correct? also i would be much obliged for any info about which version
i should choose (the stable version or the developer version) and
generally about which pitfalls i'm likely to encounter, which frontends
are "mature", etc.?

would anyone like to share experiences?

thanks and a happy new year to you all!

--
Jules Alberts