I'd like to use MySQL because of it's integration with Zope and web in general... and then it's a nice product too.

MySQL's biggest failing is it's total lack of transactions, which can be a serious issue if you have heavy use of your system for updating. It's really best used in a 99%+ read-only environment in my opinion. I guess I just don't trust non-transactional relational databases.

My collegeague is obsessed with security so he on the PostgreSQL wagon. Main issue for him is transaction control. I say: heavy hardware and light usage means no need for transaction control in my world.

PostgreSQL is slow, unfortunately, otherwise, it's a good product from what I've seen, and certainly is improving with time.

My boss says: go with Oracle or Informix. Our company already has licenses for these products. I think they are too heavy, too big and too closed. That's bad.

Honestly, I don't see "closed" as an issue here. Do you really expect to make changes to the database code? Even if Oracle released all the source code, I only think a small handful of people would ever understand the internals of a query path optimizer. The issue also might be that if you plan to integrate with multiple other systems in the future (which is always a good thing for keeping data rational) then certainly you could face integration problems with non-"standard" databases. It's your call, but I don't think that "open source" should be a judgement criteria of any weight on a database. It's opaque for a reason. Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli Python Powered Digital Creations, Inc. | petrilli@digicool.com http://www.digicool.com