Databases such as Oracle, and DB2 are either equal or better in certain respects. Furthermore, I personally find PostgreSQL to be on par if not better than MSSQL. Aside from PostgreSQL's inability to return multiple recordsets, IMHO it's easier to write stored procedures, functions, views, and triggers in PostgreSQL. In addition PostgreSQL is significantly more consistent syntacticly. Every so often my brother who works for an MS shop will ask me how to do something relatively complex in MSSQL, I'll show him how, but in addition I'll also show him how much easier it would've been in PostgreSQL.

One can argue that when working with SQL Server Studio you don't have to worry about how to do things since the IDE will create most of what you need. However, the same can be said of decent IDEs for PostgreSQL, such as EMS.

Personally, I like the ability to read my functions, views, and triggers, and be able to easily understand what's happening; which is not something I usually experience when working with MSSQL.

I last used Oracle circa 2002. The experience of using the SQL workbench tools, and installing a new server was far worse, just awful compared to the SQL Server equivalent.

Oracle's tools and installers are still not what you'd expect for the price. They are vastly improved from 2002 however.

Well, while SQL Server has its merits, I wouldn't consider it vastly superior (or superior at all) to Oracle or IBM DB2, although SQL Server 2008 is indeed getting very close.

Of course it depends on your requirements; for most purposes MSSQL is perhaps a better choice but if I needed an enterprisey-schwenterprisey zero downtime database server no matter what it costs, then of course I would go for Oracle or DB2.

Do you have bad experiences with MSSQL (or any other popular RDBMS) in an enterprisey environment ?

The only RDBMS I worked with that was too limited for the enterprise ... is MySql. But that's because when you have a "Big Ball of Mud" it is easier to patch many things in the data-store and MySql has bad support for stored procedures / triggers / views and I also wouldn't trust it to store a data warehouse. But Postgresql was more than suitable for such a scenario.

MSSQL is also more than adequate for any task you might have.

I've seen this argument many times before ... that Oracle is more reliable. But with Oracle unless you have a DBA with years of experience to administer it, you're pretty much screwed. And a RDBMS that requires so much tweaking and maintenance just to keep it working doesn't seem so reliable to me.

True story ... while working at Adobe I participated in meetings about the future of Oracle at the company. Long story short: the company holds much of its data on 2 big Oracle servers and the problem with the setup is that it doesn't scale horizontally. And many newer projects are using Mysql, because it has a good-enough replication system and it also has a hidden gem (mysql proxy).

It seems to me (at least as an outside observer ... I'm not a professional DBA) that these are just effects of marketing campaigns.