No, it isn't. Oracle is expensive but it is also the Rolls Royce, it seems. I am a strictly OpenSource man so I don't really get into the pricing thing, but I do know that it is also deal-by-deal and depending on who and what you are, the prices can vary. E.g. Educational facilities have massive discounts. Military has massive prices, etc.<snip>
You're correct about it being 'deal-by-deal' pricing. You can negotiate the salesmen down quite a bit, depending on who your company is, the field you're in, the time of year (eg. end of quarter or year nets bigger reductions), and especially if you use a bit of cleverness by getting in-house demos by the big competitors (eg. MSSQL and DB2).
Standard Edition One is listed at around $6500 Canadian per processor, or $195 per named user. This is all totally negotiable, though.
Apparently mssql is priced similarly, though I can't verify that.
Doing price comparisons isn't very helpful, what you really need to do is analyze your requirements and see what features you actually need, or will need in the future. I have no affiliation with any of these companies, so I'm not going to start a marketing war about who's better etc.
Anyways, ss they say, "You get what you pay for".
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TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your
joining column's datatypes do not match
