Database comparison

Question

Which industry-class database has the most unique features? (with "unique" meaning that no other RDBMS has them)

I think my choice here is Oracle 11g:

1. Flashback query (you can estract data as it was a moment in the past)
2. ASM - automatic storage management
3. Native code compilation of stored procedures
4. Audit features (tracing everything, from logins to statements)

and many others.

Answer 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_relational_database_management_systems && http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_object-relational_database_management_systems would be where I'd start.

As to truly "unique" features? I've seen things I thought were unique that turned out to be common once I did more digging :)

Answer 2

Funny, I rate vendors by their conformance with the ANSI/ISO SQL Standards e.g. for SQL Server my shopping list is deferrable CHECK constraints that support subqueries and proper support for DOMAINs and ASSERTIONs -- and these date from as long ago as SQL-92. For me, vendors should put in proprietary features only after they've implemented the Standard ones :)