> > MS SQL team != MS Windows team. And MS have resources to buy
> > best brains to work on MS SQL. And they did so
>
> I must say I do not always get that impression :-)

Not always != never :)

There are many layers in such complex product as any DBMS. I'm fight
near everyday with SQL2K optimizer at my work (it is very hard some time
to get good execution plan from it without full query rewrite and, yes, using
temporary tables), i don't like T-SQL as a language but its scheduler,
memory and IO layers are very good and better than our ones.

I'm not a big fan of MSSQL (despite of working with it few years) but it
have a strong points and it would be stupid to ignore it (the same about
any other DBMS)

Regards,
Vlad