Which database...

[jack at coats.org (Jack Coats)]

>From what I have seen Oracle or IBMs DB2 would be my choice on any platform.
MS SQL seems to ham string you on what you can and cannot do.  Sybase is
another strong second teer DB.

Again, it all depends on your application.  If you are MS tied, MS SQL is
fine, for single server small databases MS Jet is better (i.e. free), Access
is an also ran that is between.

MY SQL is supported on MS and all the various *NIX platforms I know of.
Their newer enterprise level version I havn't heard much about.  But given
the quality of the code in the past it is probably worthwhile looking into.

IMHO, If you project can stand it, code to be DB agnostic.  I like DB2 and
MySQL best, Oracle is find but seems to take lots of attention if you are
doing anything but the most blad implementation.  Patching on Oracle seems
to be a religious experience and takes forever.  I don't know how DB2 is, as
I haven't been a participant in that part of the efforts.  MS SQL has the
problem of being on MS platforms, and updates seem to be problematic at
times.

In short, all DBs have problemes.  Whose problems do you want to deal with?

Sorry for the rambling response...