Re: Oracle/Sybase/Informix/MS-SQL Server

>Any reasonably intelligent person who has >used Windows can set up and manage an NT server (manage user accounts, >manage print servers, etc.) with no additional training. In fact I didn't >even need to open a book. All the instructions are on-line in build-in >help files. I cannot say the same thing for UNIXs. I'd like to show you not a different set of experiences, but rather a different point of view... You're comparing Microsoft with Unix on Bill Gate's terms. Let me put my own spin on it... Microsoft puts a lot of time and effort into making things not "user friendly", but *novice* friendly. As you rightly state, it's easy to pick up... Unix, is, on the other hand *expert* friendly. The tools are powerful and flexible. The ancient test of a good tool is that not only does it get used for things which the author never intended, but that it performs *well* in these circumstances. I use the vi editor. It's got a learning curve like a brick wall, but having mastered it, I wouldn't swap it for *anything*. When confined to Microsoft, I pull my hair with frustration of the extreem difficulty I have in persuading it to do the things that should be trivial. "Please convert all these files from this format to that format" "Please send this text file to the printer without formatting it" "Please apply this chage to all the text files that contain my name" Andrew