sorry for the newbie question.

but i am interested in knowing which SQL program i can use that is most compatible with

MS SQL server...

im not running anything... "important" in terms of a critical servers...

im just a student thats taking a intro database class, and they just happen to use MS SQL Server.

thus i would like to "learn" the equivalent of it on the *NIX side...

(My SQL, Postgre, DB2, Oracle? etc...)

the important aspects im looking for similar (or exact) like MS SQL Server:
===================================================

- SQL Query Analyzer... (where i can input CODE, and then just run it... displaying tables, etc.)
- perferbly GUI interface...but console is not a problem
- enterprise manager, where i can access, create databases

Any comments appreciated.

thank you.

Well, not to dissuade you but most SQL DB's aren't "standard". What I mean is that you're going to have to unlearn a lot of things to move from one to the other. This holds true for commercial and OSS DBs, mostly because there is no good SQL standard. Because of the tug of war between players, SQL is more of a misnomer than a standard. However, once you learn SQL fairly well, your knowledge should translate to other DBs reasonably easily.

I'd recommend looking at MYSQL, Postgre, IBM's DB2 and Oracle as the better ones, depending on your needs. None is perfect, but they tend to work with each other a whole lot better than MS's implementation does. Not that it's terrible, because it is used alot, but you'll make more money learning the other's versus MS's "mom and pop easy" DB.

I use Mysql, partialy because it's OSS, but also because it hooks into almost every programming language out there.

I recommend not going with MySQL because it's very incomplete and you'll find you can't do some things you learn in class.

I use MySQL for my website and projects but (beeing also a student having database classes) I know it isn't enough for some learning examples.

wow.

interesting.

thx for the reply guys.

i did not know that database's can be "so" in terms of standards.

so i guess none of them have a "query analyzer" like MS SQL Server?

if you can get hold of Sybase ASE 11.9.2 from www.sybase.com/ase
for Linux, then it will pretty much be the same as MS SQL server, interms of sys tables.
The GUI, sorry, you may not get it.