I am downloading and installing Oracle XE for a quick proof of concept for a job that I am working on. I haven't used and Oracle product since working for a company that was contracted to do a port of Oracle v5 to the Wang VS. A short time later I did some work for my father's company and came up with a contact management system using Oracle v6 and Apples HyperCard. Fast forward 15 years and I have a job that requires some data transfer with an Oracle Database. Thought I would give their express edition a try. All I can say is that the registration and download process was one of the most confusing processes that I have gone through in a long time. Click on the "accept lisence" button, select a download link, hit the browser back button and you are in UI hell. "You must accept the license agreement" only it is already selected. This was only the begining. I can't wait to see what the install throws at me?

The world would be in an uproar if Microsoft put out junk like this.

Update (Dec 6): It only got worse. Good thing I installed XE on a virtual pc. It made it very easy to just delete the whole thing. Hope my bias isn't too strong, but I feel good about continuing with MS SQL. Oracle might be a good product but it has a significant learning curve and I simple don't see a compelling reason to invest the time to get up to speed on it right now.