The database is largely irrelevant if the software is of any decent quality. That is to say, you should really only consider software using open standards or with published specifications.
Lightroom uses EXIF, IPTC and XMP - you don't lose anything in terms of keywords or metadata if you move away from Lightroom.
I would expect that Picasa and ACDSee also use the same standards, but I don't know for sure - should be easy to verify.
I was under the impression that Lightroom and ACDSee (may) store some data (keywords, in particular, or comments) in their DB and not in the EXIF, IPTC, XMP. Maybe I am wrong in this, at least for Lightroom?
ACDSee is more confusing, now that I think about it. While paying with it yesterday, I did see that ACDSee has some metadata which is supposedly in the local DB, while other is in the EXIF/IPTC. I need to read more. I am guessing it is possible that ACDSee takes EXIF/IPTC data and copies it into a local db for performance reasons... Mmmh.
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