Without knowing the problem domain, the programming language(is it T-SQL?) and at least some information about the size and use of the database, it's pretty hard to make a decision about which is best and why. I've been a DBA for 15 years and 12 of that with SQLServer and I'd have to say, it depends. I would say this however, I have spent many nights looking at data because I was paged over a critical system being down and I would much rather select the rows of data and compare them against a "Y" or "N" then trying to do some bit manipulation to see which bit was set. MHO If you feel strongly about this, do the research, write the emails, try to make a difference and if things blow up, produce your emails and sit around with a smug satisfied look. Just one more note, DO NOT SHOW THIS THREAD TO YOUR MANAGEMENT!!!!!. I am certain they will NOT take it seriously when they see someone giving you advice about leaving your job over some compromises that the company has made. The last thing you want people in your company to think is that your are childish and will run whenever you don't get your way.

And I would want to use Microsoft products on Linux because? 1) Linux needs more hackers making viruses 2) Linux needs to have tons of bloated buggy "managed" code 3) Winux sounds better than linux (or Lindows sounds better than Windows) 4) Microsoft is the 800lb gorilla that hates:) open source products 5) All of the about

I've gotten such a good laugh reading this thread. I was relatively late on the COBOL programming scene. I started programming COBOL and Fortran in 1972. I really don't remember C being an option until the 1980s. :-D COBOL is/was a great language because anyone could be taught it. That didn't make them good programmers, but it did exactly what companies needed. Lots of warm bodies that could write code. Very much like today's modern(?) languages, almost anyone can learn them but the majority of today's programmers are just as bad as yesterday's COBOL programmers. It's not the language that is crappy, it's the people that think they can code. I've learned a number of other languages since my COBOL days, IBM Assembler, C, C++, Powerbuilder, VB, SQL, Actionscript, to name a couple. The really amusing part is that I see programmers making the same types of errors over and over. You get a spec if you're lucky, you start coding, you do some quick testing to make sure that it does what you think it should and then move on. There was a saying that I read years ago. 95% of all programmers should flowchart but only 5% do. That's why we have so many crappy programs, that perform badly and need constant maintenance. Not because the languages we program in are bad, it's because programmers don't learn the languages well enough to express the problem clearly. Anyone remember COBOL's "Alter goto?"