🚀 go-pugleaf

Marc,

The tools of choice depend upon how much how much you're willing to
trade off in time (your time in creating the output files) vs. money
(for the initial cost of the tool). There are a number of FrameMaker
based databased publishing solutions that can generate  a couple of
hundred page catalogs with lots graphics in mere minutes and price
lists in seconds (that's right through from the database to a final
PDF!), but you're looking at price tags of $10K and up for these
tools.

Some of the FM-based tools to check out are:

Miramo at http://www.miramo.com
Patternstream at http://www.patternstream.com
DLFormatter at http://www.datalogics.com
UniMerge at Refined Reports (no website - see Dan Emory's paper at
http://www.microtype.com/resources/articles/UMPAPER.PDF )

Here are some links that give you a good overview of the whole
automated/database publishing scenarios:

FrameMaker based

http://partners.adobe.com/asn/framemaker/PDFS/Database_FM7.pdf
http://www.adobe.com.au/products/fmserver/main.html
http://www.miramo.com
http://www.patternstream.com
http://www.guidance.nl/products/catalogger.php
http://www.microtype.com/resources/articles/UMPAPER.PDF 
http://www.infocon.com/services_DBpub.html
http://www.ig.co.uk/ProdTech/DataPublisher
http://www.beyondprint.com/

Quark/PageMaker/Indesign based

http://www.quark.com/about/presscenter/prview.jsp?idx=151
http://www.objectpublish.com/index.html (note one of their highlighted
customers is going to be jumping ship to a Miramo/FM workflow)
http://www.databasepub.com/catalog_genie.htm
http://www.dynagram.com/En/dps/dpsmain.html
http://www.banta-im.com/variable_print/autoprice.htm
http://www.kytek.com/Autopage/Autopage5.html
http://www.galleymaster.com/index.html
http://www.mcresearch.co.uk/MCWeb/Home/MCRHome1.htm
http://www.napsys.com/cflow.html
http://www.tecsoft.com/dxp.html

Mixed Bag - various products (or custom) as formatting engine:

http://www.datalogics.com/comparison-publishing.asp
http://www.catbase.com
http://www.a2i.com/
http://www.a2i.com/news/SeyboldA2iTableLayouts.pdf
http://www.visionary-media.com/
http://www.xyvision.com/default.asp

Research Reports & Books (need to purchase to see contents)

http://www.granadaresearch.com/readi.htm
http://www.wilsonweb.com/reviews/database-catalogs.htm

Database Publishing Service Providers & Systems

http://www.axialinfo.com
http://www.activelightning.com/index.html
http://www.schemazoo.com/home.htm
http://www.aztec.com/aztec/catalogs.htm
http://www.esitech.com/c@t.htm
http://www.aftermarket.org/eCommerce/eCatalog/eCatalog.asp
http://www.databasepublish.com/main2-service.htm

Overview of Publishing engines:

http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/08-01/chagnon.html