We use IDS for our OLTP application which we sell as a package to our
customers. Most customers accept what we recommend but in both the US
and UK some customers expect MS SQL Server for various reasons, the main
one being their internal IT policy. Other reasons are nice GUI, IT
skills, comfort factors.

We absolutely have to have replication of some form and we use HDR for
replication with IDS which works very well. With MSSQL there are two
options (sort of) suitable for us: transactional replication (this is a
pig to maintain and severely disruptive if the schema changes) and
clustering (expensive). So MSSQL loses for good sound reasons and
usually we manage to sell IDS. But for us the pressure is definitely to
use MSSQL from some quarters. No-one has ever specifically requested any
other DBMS, IDS included.

Ben.

In Denver the consensus was Oracle was the bigger problem, but as you
point out it does seem to depend on which side of the pond you are on

Cheers
Paul