Comparing DB technologies

This can't be answered in the context of which you've asked it. There are a couple things that can make your decision easy (like cost) and I've included some information below that I hope you find useful.

1.) Budget

• If you don't have one or it's small, then MySQL is certainly your best option. If you're storing a very small amount of information, you may be able to use a fairly inexpensive Oracle or SQL Server license, but as things get larger both of those technologies get expensive quickly.

2.) Data Storage

• This kinda goes along with the other, but as the size of your data increases you will likely want to start partitioning data. This is free in MySQL, but an extremely expensive option with Oracle. (I'm uncertain with SQL Server) Oracle, chargers per processor (and uses a core factor based on the architecture for processors over 2 cores) for partitioning and the list price of that is ~9k per. If you want support it's ~20% of that per year. What makes this worse is that you can only get partitioning in Oracle if you have Enterprise licenses which are quite expensive in themselves. As you can see...it takes some $$$ to run a partitioned Oracle database.

3.) Management

• This will depend on prior experience. I have the least experience on SQL Server, but find it's management tools easy to use. Oracle has good tools but it's complexity can lend to a steeper learning curve.

Hope this information helps you in your decision.

I have always felt that based solely on cost and performance, SQL Server is the best database engine on the market. I have several SQL Server instances that I set up many years ago and I have not ever had to more than ensure that daily backups were occurring. No need for DBAs to monitor and adjust the databases like DB2 and Oracle both seem to require.