>I have found that this ability to manimulate the data and combine successive extractions from the database to be an asset not only in data analysis situations, but also in cases where you want to enhance the user interface

Indeed. I generally try to avoid religious arguments regarding PC and software preferences. But I can honestly say that I have personally experienced situations where an IS shop or IS manager basically said, "that can't be done", with respect to embodying an application with powerful data analytics at acceptable speed. This has especially applied to applications that integrate human expertise with software for pusposes of expert-level, computer assisted decision support. The real issues were that they didn't have the right tool(s) and that they held some underlying prejudice regarding what tools they would consider using.