Databases

[Shovel]

FBM's evangelic plugging of MySQL in Panda's "which MSSQL" thread set me thinking.

MySQL, as was said, is very good for being free. But when the stable version (4.0) doesn't implement such niceties as sub-queries, let alone stored procedures which aren't due until version 5, it set me wondering.

MS SQL Server is absolutely costly, and so not an option for a student wanting to play with the above mentioned features (I'm sure there're more besides). But there are other free DBs about. Postgre comes to mind, but I've never, ever used it.
Has anyone? What is your database of choice? What features do you now find indespensible? (Note importantance of freeness).

Finally, are stored procedures as good as they sounded in my last job interview? Or is it all a fuss over convenience?

 

[phlash]

I think you can download eval versions of Oracle (ie: 'the real thing') if you want to have the pain of writing complicated (cf: non-standard) SQL and stored procs (which are seriously DB specific.. cf: vendor lock-in!).

I've also played about with Informix and PointBase (since it comes with WebLogic - my current source of hell at work) and personally I don't recommend any of this stuff unless you are locked into some existing system and need to squeeze the last few milliseconds out of a complicated query - most performance issues these days are due to serialisation of results to your chosen middleware or presentation layer.. or plain old bad schema design.

Phil (I've done too much J2EE recently).

 

[TdC]

I hate all databases with a passion tbh, but MySQL is nice enough for the stuff I do at home. A mate is pressing me to move to Postgre but we'll see heh. At workies we use oracle and sybase, and DB2 on the big things iirc.

 

[SheepCow]

I use MySQL 5 on development box, and MySQL 4 on production boxes.

 

[sibanac]

postgres gives you all mssql cqn do qnd some more
http://www.postgresql.org/