How many developers in USA & Oracle question

[Len Morgan]

It's been my experience that if you ultimately want to move to Oracle, 
Postgresql is a better choice than mySQL because PG tries to be as 
Oracle compatible as possible.  I can also tell you from experience that 
if you want to move to MS SQL Server later, be VERY careful about your 
SQL since there are lots of things that are incompatible even with 
"simple" SQL statements.  For example, in Oracle/Postgres you would join 
two fields you would use something like SELECT last_name || ', ' || 
first_name whereas in MS SQL it would be SELECT last_name + ', ' + 
first_name (very VB like).

You might try installing a recent version of Postgres on your desktop 
because they have recently made some terrific strides in user 
friendliness especially on Windows (they now have a native Windows port!).

Len Morgan