Re : Losing out to SQL Server

I've been in your position often and it's not easy. One thing that worked well for me was to use the existing Oracle infrastructure for the new project. Consolidate various applications into a single database using different schemas. This way management was happy because their investment in Oracle was being leveraged for more than one business requirements. And you as a DBA get to keep working with Oracle.

Also, in your cost analysis, don't forget to factor in the install time, knowledge/strenght of the sysadmin/DBA team on the product, time to write/update the documentation, effort required to setup and test the various failure scenarios with the related backup and restore operations to fix them, HA setup and testing, cost and time of training personnel or devs on the product along with possible marketing benefits/issues for your corporation if using Oracle vs. another RDBMS. That last part may sound strange, but one of my previous job they had to run Oracle for the « prestige » of telling their potential customers that they were using Oracle. Hey, every trick counts no? :)

If all else fdails and you're ready to try another RDBMS then maybe check PostgreSQL [1] which IMHO is better and has more features than MySQL. Or consider EnterpriseDB [2] which is a commercial product built on top of PostgreSQL, but with Oracle-like commands which makes the learning curve easy and drives the cost way down.

HTH, David

[1] http://www.postgresql.org/
[2] http://www.enterprisedb.com/

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l