Sam Gendler writes:

I need record level locking in a database, and I need it quickly, without having a huge learning curve or added cost of administration. What do folks out there recommend. Does Postgres allow record level locking?

Yep. In fact it goes quite a bit further: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/user/mvcc.htm

I am on a linux platform, and refuse to use any MS products, so don't go there.

It uses a BSD license so it's even more libre/lucre free than MySQL.

Additionally, I need to be able to easily export database content as both SQL statements and in some sort of delimited text file format.

Er... do you mean ' I need to be able to easily export database content using both SQL statements and dumping to some sort of delimited text file format.'?

I can do the latter with Zope, of course, but it is fairly slow and expensive. MySQL does all of that nicely, but doesn't have record level locking.

Or transactions, or constraits beyond NOT NULL and UNIQUE, or triggers or rules, or arrays or a dozen other things you'll wonder how you ever did without when you where using MySQL :-) John.