Humour me back ... download SQL Server express edition and the accompanying SQL Server Management Studio (Express edition) and have a look at it. It runs well on Windows 7 & XP desktops. People could also recommend postgres, but for getting up and running quickly, and for its very friendly management tools, SQL Server could be a great fit. It has the best graphical query editor ever seen .... Of course, if you are supporting multiple users with a network approach, then there must be a file server, so you'd need to get it installed on the file server or sneakily use another always-on computer as the server. It's a bit of mucking around, but once you win the argument with your IT people and get control over SQL Server, or at least one database on it, you'll be deploying web2py apps faster than you can blink. And you won't have to waste a second testing it.
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