>>And M$ is a champion of writing products which need excessive tuning, and moreover, the default values are quite often aimed for simplicity and not performance. This goes for WExplorer, IExplorer... and I think this adds the SQL server. I'm waiting for one to be delivered to us soon, and I'm almost sure you'll hear me speaking in lots of four letter words (they line up nicely in a nonproportional font)..
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>SQL Server 7.0 is self-tuning. I'll just add that Oracle typically requires a fulltime DBA to manage it, SQL Server does not. This tells me that SQL-Server only occassionally needs tuning, while it is an on going battle with Oracle.

Self-tuning? I'd like to see that. If it tunes fine, I mean, and doesn't wind up some wrong defaults. After all, this time it ain't aimed at an average illiterate, but at people who know some things - so the interface may be decent, why not.

I've heard of some teams here who _develop_ in Oracle (front end too, using Power Objects or whatever was Oracle's tool), and I've heard they've made nice progress - they still haven't got significantly behind the two-year deadline.