I guess you haven't been on the same playground as the geniuses at CMS who
are implementing the "stimulus" portions of the "HiTech Act." They're
stumbling all over themselves trying to write so many regulations and
penalties that it's going to be a nightmare.

A friend is a dev for one of the top companies. It's no fun for them either.
They need their software ready to go when the regs are finished.

In any event, I'll look at BCM. Just so I understand, however: if I
struggled with InfoPath (or if someone who knew what he was doing used it
as
a development tool), the result would require a SQL server, not just
SharePoint. Is that correct?

SQL Express will do.