>I am still trying to understand the validity of this chart.

What do you mean? TPC is _the_ benchmarking authority for large-scale databases.

> Where I work, Oracle is the main engine.

As is the case with most shops.

>I've heard several arguments going on as the topic of using SQL more has come up, specifically related to the money issue. But technical people have argued for Oracle for its scalability and robustness.

The TPC-C benchmark is designed to test scalability. As for robustness, well, I guess that's a little more objective.

>Personally, I was very surprised not too long ago. A coworker, who works with SQL on the Intranet as creating some tables. He asked about some functionality which would be easily accomplished thru cascading triggers. I was amazed to find out that SQL Server didn't support those till the 2000 release.

Yeah, that's a little strange, but they're available now, and you could do everything that they do before, you just had to roll your own. Curious, do you know of other 'weaknesses' of SQL Server when compared to Oracle?

I have never used Oracle before, but am curious to hear from someone who has used both. If you look at the cost to deploy, the performance, and the skill level needed to administer each, SQL Server looks like a no-brainer.

> In terms of jobs, I know for a fact that Oracle DBAs are one of the hottest positions there is right now. And people are willing to pay them excellent wages.

That's for sure, but SQL gurus are a hot commodity as well. An acquaintance of mine just moved to SF for a SQL job paying around 90K.