While its an interesting viewpoint, but I hope you do realize that the MySQL data access driver is still in its infancy, and its slower than the native MSSQL dr

While its an interesting viewpoint, but I hope you do realize that the MySQL data access driver is still in its infancy, and its slower than the native MSSQL driver (quite understandable because both MSSQL and ASP.NET are developed by MS). Now on your viewpoint: - LIMIT ... you know you can use TOP in MSSQL, or the inbuilt DataView paging in ASP.NET with MSSQL. - SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS ... The DataReader and other data access classes already provide this. - memory requirements ... small doesn't mean more optimized for use with ASP.NET. Database caching with MSSQL on a Windows box is much better than with MySQL on the same Windows box. - read performance ... this I can accept. MySQL may perform better for simple read-only data access. - management ... agreed. MSSQL lacks the ease of wa eb-based database management tool, as compared to MySQL. - backup/restore/moving data ... agreed. But for slightly broader migrations, DTS and Replication are the answer. - MySQL is a full version ... any web host providing MySQL database or MSSQL database, will provide you with a standard version - widespread ... For .NET apps, among the .NET community, MSSQL is any day more popular that MySQL. - fulltext engine ... I've worked with full text indexing engines, and let me tell you that the MySQL fulltext engine is as bad as the MSSQL fulltext service. For fulltext indexing, its always a better idea to use an external engine like Lucene or Sphinx - multi OS support - unless you are developing/deploying ASP.NET apps on Linux using Mono, I wouldn't bother about it much Bottomline, (unfortunately) no other database server provides better performance for small-to-medium scale ASP.NET apps than MSSQL. For larger apps, Oracle can surely scale up. Just my .2c, from years of experience with "both" LAMP and .NET/MSSQL. Hope it helps!