New Era good for Real Time responses?

Hypothetical situation: We have factories with large databases controlling stock, machines, etc etc. The users need good GUI's to access these centralised tables. However some equipment might change those tables at any time. Can I get the GUI programs to respond to a change in the table? I know this is very sketchy - but we are talking hypothetically. I assume that the central database has some kind of triggers and that the network is functional. In the office we are discussing the relative merits of New Era, Delphi, etc etc without any hard facts or experience. Thanks Alex alexmc@biccdc.co.uk