What database technology would best suit my project ?

Title says it all. Basically, I am working for a laboratory and I have noticed that there is a lot of paperwork that could be turned into an application / database. For example, production reports could very well fit a database and maintenance schedules could be integrated in that database as well. I have followed a course called "Information Technologies in Organizations" at college (HEC Montreal, business school) that I think will be very useful to help model the business process that is associated with my project. However, I don't know what technology would be suit my project (hence the title). I have to take into account that reports will be sent from manager to manager and hence I will need to be able to export to different file formats. I also have to take into account the limits / advantages / disadvantages of each technology. For example, Access is the application I know best but its possibilities are quite limited outside of database management and if the company I work for updates their systems in the future and that Access 2003/2007 is not supported then the application becomes useless.

Any help is *much* appreciated.

A few more pieces of information:

I have decent knowledge of C/C++, I have used SQL in the past, I know the Office Suite quite well, I am willing to learn a new (programming) language if it is required.

SQL is probably the best. MFC has classes for interfacing with SQL databses, and others too, but SQL seems to be the flavor of the month for databases, and it seems pretty useful too.

Sounds like you need more of a content management solution (which would use an RDBMS among other things)