Well, I use SQLServer at work (not my choice -- the whole shop runs on MS products) and have grown to like it...

When we upgraded from SQL Server 6.12 (?) to 7.0 about a year (?) ago, the performance improvement was incredible ... we had been considering buying a high speed specialized database (some sort star schema kind of thing) for data mining projects (vs. our transactional normalized schemas) ... but simply didn't need to after we upgraded to 7.0... very large multi-table million+ row joins and aggregates running in near real time -- yes, many appropriate indices, but still really impressive speed

I've heard MS is putting considerable resources into making SQL Server fast stable and cheap -- and I think that when MS decides to put a high priority on a category, they develop really strong software....

Just my 2 cents

nop