Locked?
"locked into the proprietary Sparc and Solaris."
No, they're then locked into the proprietary Windows + MS-SQL world. Just because you change masters doesn't mean you're no longer a slave.
Near-final code for Microsoft's next SQL Server database is due today, wrapping in hardware from partners to help counter Oracle's proprietary Exadata appliance. A second SQL Server 2008 R2 community technology preview will be delivered for testing at Microsoft's Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in …
"Fausto Ibarra, Microsoft director of product management for SQL Server, said the advantage of Microsoft over Oracle and Sun is you get choice of hardware"
Heh? Oracle runs on x86, x86_64, Power5/6, Sparc (+maybe MIPS? Not sure if this was dropped). SQL Server support x86/x86_64. This is just plain bull shit.
AC wrote: "SQL Server is probably the best engineered, most secure software product ever produced."
Utter and total bullshit. One of my most satisfying hacks ever used SQL-Server. Had this colleague that was so full of how great and secure Windows was. Told him not. So he challenged me to hack into his system. Which I did. Locked his account and created a new one for myself with admin access. And it took a mere 5 minutes to do. Thank you SQL-Server.
He had to beg to get access to his system again - and never again touted Windows and Microsoft products as being so fine and so secure.
Funny words coming from Microsoft!
At least, they should check their facts... as a previous commenter said, Exadata has nothing to do with Solaris or SPARC... and even if it would, both OpenSolaris and OpenSPARC are Open Source, SPARC is also an open standard, managed by the SPARC organization, and Solaris runs in both SPARC and x86/x64 architectures.
Who is getting locked by whom?