Ed,

I certainly would not second guess anyone's decision on which tool to use
for which job. We all have our reasons, some more or less seneschal than
others. Also, I intended no hurt when using the "toy" quip, it was only
intended to be light hearted.

Not to be argumentative, but just to expand upon my perspective a bit. At
the top of the DBA food chain is the Enterprise Data Management team. At
the heart of Enterprise Data Management is one or more industrial strength
RDBMS. I just do not see SQL Server being that engine today. That does not
mean that there is no place for the SQL Server, Access, Excel, etc. But I
do have to ask, if Oracle or DB2 are the same price as SQL Server for a 5 gb
extract, departmental, or work group database, why not use Oracle or DB2,
especially if you already have Oracle and DB2 skills in-house? I think the
answers to that question are all non-technical.

Now we get into why people make the purchasing choices that we do.
Dissecting that it is not easy, especially with IBM, Oracle, and MS all over
you once they determine you have budget to spend. Sales people only have
their next Bimmer on their mind.

Frank Dodgers
Evergreen Information Systems
Oracle/DB2/Linux/AIX Certified
303-810-6625


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