I have been working with SQL Server starting from version 6 in late 90s. Ironically, I had never suspected I will end up using SQL Server or using it throughout the rest of my entire career, and I have no plans defecting. The short story is I joined an incubator company which later became a spin-off a large enterprise where there were almost no Microsoft products used (I initially worked on a Mainframe DB2, then on Unix as a C programmer using Informix and Oracle). At that small start up initially ......