Oracle has these features, SQL Server has these features, etc. But that's not really where the real importance lies. Sure, functionality is a part of it because your database should be able to do ...

OK, while I'm really bad about approving comments (mostly because the platform makes it so painful), I do want to answer a few of them here real quick. First and foremost because this is bothering me.

The first is support for regular expressions, which has long been a feature gap between Oracle and SQL Server. If you aren't familiar with the dark arts of RegEx, ...