SQL 2005 Express Edition is free and you can use it for databases up to 4GB in size otherwise you get most of SQL 2005. Running SQL 2000 on XP isn't very useful anyway because of the connection restrictions on XP. IMHO the most efficient way to license SQL 2005 is to do it per processor that way you can have infinite connections and instances running on your server for a pretty low cost.
Of course if you don't want to pay anything at all and are prepared to do a little grunt work you can use MySQL 5.0 for everything except enterprise functionaly (and if you need enterprise functionality then you should be expecting to pay for it). I would guess for almost everyone on this forum MySQL does more than enough.
Darkheart
Of course if you don't want to pay anything at all and are prepared to do a little grunt work you can use MySQL 5.0 for everything except enterprise functionaly (and if you need enterprise functionality then you should be expecting to pay for it). I would guess for almost everyone on this forum MySQL does more than enough.
Darkheart