After 6 years of dumping Microsoft DBs into MySQL, it would be a hard sell for me.

A friend got me started on the PHP / MySQL world and showed me the versatility of the product even though I had always used SQL Server from Microsoft. Even though I am in charge of maintaining our MS-SQL Servers and am a Microsoft fan because they make sense for long term usage in the business world, I usually choose MySQL for on the fly programming and backend scripts; mainly because its FREE and stable. The one thing that scares me about a free Microsoft tool is that it will not be supported in 3 years (like the SUS admin tool). Then again, Oracle could take over MySQL and we'd all be screwed.

I will take a look at SQL Server 2005, but it has to be robust and needs to be easy to use since I don't have a lot of time to waste figuring out the new features.