Ive used Borland's Interbase, Oracle and SQL 7; I would have to say that SQL 7 is the easiest to configure and maintain. I would also agree that when ADO was developed, that SQL Server was in definatley mind.

One of my larger databases (hosted by SQL 7) with anywhere from 10 to 50 concurrent users of a VB DB client sustained excellent performance.

When I evaluated SQL 7, I developed a VB program that spawned 250 ADO connections and they all issued UPDATE statements on fields in multiple tables; I got EXCELLENT response times.

I work for an ISP, and we have developed applications which add and update fields in a table at almost real time (call center agent statistics) and SQL 7 handles the load well (Oracle performed a little bit better though).

If your interested in more specific performance details, contact me at the [email protected]