As an Oracle GURU I am somewhat biased but here goes my take. I like the admin shell to MS SQL. Oracle could take some lessons there. The MS SQL database has many of the same functional properties that Oracle has with the exception of embedded 'Objects' and java stored procedures. Oracle is portable across many platforms while MS SQL is not (yet). The stored procedures are almost equal in impelemtation and in execution. I like some of the non-standard things that MS SQL can do that oracle cannot. This is very much true in result set handling between client and server and web apps and server as well. Oracle 9i provides much more flexibility in the design of the engine so that logical spaces (tablespaces)can be customized by block size and type. I belive that Oracle will scale into terabyte database sizes better than MS SQL at this time. In all the major advantage that Oracle has now is in scalability and object integeration. I belive that MS SQL is a very good relational database product that will continue to get better. The one thing the MS SQL needs to do now is to encompass 'java' development better and tighter. Since this appears to be a hot political issue I'm don't expect to see significant changes right away.