I have a question relating to databases and at what point is worth diving into one. I am primarily an embedded engineer, but I am writing an application using QT to interface with our controller.

We are at an odd point where we have enough data that it would be feasible to implement a database (around 700+ items and growing) to manage everything, but I am not sure it is worth the time right now to deal with. I have no problems implementing the GUI with files generated from excel and parsed in, but it gets tedious and hard to track even with VBA scripts. I have been playing around with converting our data into something more manageable for the application side with Microsoft Access and that seems to be working well. If that works out I am only a step (or several) away from using an SQL database and using the QT library to access and modify it.

I don't have much experience managing data at this level and am curious what may be the best way to approach this. So what are some of the real benefits of using a database if any in this case? I realize much of this can be very application specific, but some general ideas and suggestions on how to straddle the embedded/application programming line would be helpful.

Thanks