Poor software choices can be very costly for companies who get taken down the wrong path. It's worth asking the tough questions early on.

MySQL has long been the most popular open-source database solution for web designers. It is free, fast, stable, and widely supported. Until version 5.1 was released, MySQL's feature set was quite limited compared to the "big dogs" in the database industry, including Oracle, DB2, and MS SQL Server. Many of the new version 5+ features enable MySQL databases to operate more independently than before, because the database itself can process and validate data, rather than relying on outside software.