Re: minimum hardware requirements for small postgres db

> I seek an open source RDBMS with close adherance to ANSI standards,
> good free graphic design tools for drawing of the ER Diagram,
> validation of the ERD model, and generation of the SQL required to
> build the DB.

Database design and development tools are (imho unfortunately) not
included with the PostgreSQL project.

There are a lot of free ones (besides commercial ones) listed here that
work with PostgreSQL:

http://www.databaseanswers.org/modelling_tools.htm

On "weak" hardware, I would avoid anything that's Java-based.

> I only want to design a few small DB Apps using about 20 tables, for
> single-user offline environment, hopefully runnable on Nettop class
> hardware under WinXP or Win7 32bit.
>
> I want to access the db via a Forms driven GUI and a Report-writer
> with features comparable to old versions of Access, but preferably
> also open-source.

LibreOffice Base comes with a native PostgreSQL driver.

If you want to implement "real" applications, there are a bunch of
database RAD frameworks available for Python:

using PyQt (& Sqlalchemy):
Pypapi: www.pypapi.org
Camelot: www.python-camelot.com
Qtalchemy: www.qtalchemy.org

using PyGTK:
Sqlkit: sqlkit.argolinux.org (also uses Sqlalchemy)
Kiwi: www.async.com.br/projects/kiwi

using wxPython:
Dabo: www.dabodev.com
Defis: sourceforge.net/projects/defis (Russian only)
GNUe: www.gnuenterprise.org

Pypapi, Camelot, Sqlkit and Dabo seem to be the most active and best
documented/supported ones.

On "weak" hardware, wxpython (Dabo) and GTK (SQLkit) will probably
be more suitable than PyQt.

Sincerely,

Wolfgang