No worries - good comment :). What I meant by "all-in" shouldn't be taken as "in total". In other words: in all the projects I worked on, only ONE TIME did I ge

No worries - good comment :). What I meant by "all-in" shouldn't be taken as "in total". In other words: in all the projects I worked on, only ONE TIME did I get to use MySQL. I installed Ubuntu once for fun - but when it came to work and what I did for work - it was MS all the way down. These were choices made by my contracts and my employers. What you're saying is valid: I could have pushed to use another system or platform. I can do this now - but back then it was not nearly as easy to just pick up and learn the intricacies of different platforms. You might disagree, it's sort of subjective - but installing PHP/MySQL was a complicated affair if you're not familiar. Finally - the whole premise of the post was the very question itself: "Did I do the right thing?". I was questioning, and I had to make a choice. I constantly did (and still do) that.