All of this reminds me of the business folks I do short contract work for. I think they all went to the same school, so many of them are using MS Excel for a database, and use IIS or a web server without an admin or a webmin. Then they wonder why their "database" gets slow, data vanishes and customers complain. Typically I take them to Perl and mySQL on Linux. A few of them like to put out the larger chunks-o-change for the M$ Sql Server (personally, if you are going to pay, go Oracle... No comparison on reliability or development). Most of them cite advertising as to why they bought into anything or better yet, "a friend of mine who writes software said". The L.A.M.P. model is a great way to start. IMO it is more reliable than M$, more secure and more flexible (and if it matters, much less expensive up front). And, if you stay generic (ANSI), then you can go to almost any other platform anyway.