<troll mode>
I see requests that get bashed with the old "it's in the standard" excuse. Happened to me once or twice in the past and felt like I gotta tell someone, and since I cannot afford a full-time psychologist, I'm bringing it here.

In my little world, The Standard and two shillings will get you a cup of tea. At its best, but usually it's just an annoying brat. Whoever's ready to bite that bullet though and let us live our own time...

From the top of my head:
- string constants are CHAR but operations return VARCHAR, well, some, and then some are not. it's in the book, so naturally, nobody even considered discussing the practical implications of it.
- default values are useless if you want to use views (i set them in triggers). in the book. no discussion.

So why defending the standard so much? Marketing acceptance? Project ideology? Sure it has little value technically, as I'm yet to see a multi-database piece of software (abstraction library, O/R mapper etc.) that doesn't have a lot of blood on it. Engines are just to different and anyone who has written a connection library know it.
</troll mode>