We hesitated to award the blue ribbon to a product that costs twice as much as its nearest competitors. But in the end, Oracle9i prevailed thanks to its superior feature set, reliability, and performance. Oracle9i offers the most advanced management and performance tools, and it topped the other products on our throughput tests. Oracle9i also lets you run Enterprise JavaBeans right from the DBMS and has improved in usability with this release. We wish Oracle9i were less proprietary and expensive, but any feature you could desire is available and polished.

IBM's DB2 Universal Database 7.2 deserves honorable mention, because of its support for open standards such as XML and Java. Configuration isn't as streamlined as Oracle9i's, but it lets you interoperate more easily with other vendors' products. And for the enterprise capabilities it offers, it's a good value.

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 SP2 is the hands-down ease-of-use leader in the field, so if you don't have an outsized IT budget, it's a good choice. SQL Server 2000 is also suitable for dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft shops. Don't expect it to be a top performer with a Java app server, but if you work with ASP and VisualStudio, you'll get excellent throughput rates.

We wished we could give higher marks to Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5. It has forward-looking XML features, the ability to run EJBs natively, and a true bargain-basement price for an enterprise-level product. We simply found its administration tools and usability to be a generation behind.

Though MySQL 4.0 lacks capabilities that enterprises will insist on, such as stored procedures, it deserves a mention for providing a reliable, fast platform at a nominal cost. Its query caching also represents an advance.