> 6. CLR Integration allows you to write a lot of things in C# (or VB.NET) [2]
You can also use a Mono plugin at Postgres, just like Perl, Python, C, C++, Lisp, Haskel, R-Cran... But it's not that, #6 was about the core functionality of the DBMS changing. For example, you can add new index types at Postgres with plugins, and people do add them. Once somebody wrote a plugin for manipulating SQL queries at what was at the time an object oritented database called Postgres. That's how deep you can go.
> 10. Unicode is there by default if you use nchar/nvarchar/ntext columns, there's no problems unless you choose to use char/varchar/text instead
Yeah, Unicode is used by default if you tell the DBMS to use Unicode... Thus, it's not the default. I'd agree that this is not a big problem.
> Yeah, Unicode is used by default if you tell the DBMS to use Unicode... Thus, it's not the default.
False. Positively false. Because there is no default. Whenever you create a new column, which incidentally should contain text, you need to choose a type for that column. There is no default column-type. You need to be specific about how your data gets stored. That's why it's called a schema.
And when making that choice, for your column which will contain text, you must ask yourself two questions:
1. What sort of capacity is needed?
2. Are you living in the 1980s or in the year 2013? If your answer is the latter, you always choose Unicode unless you can argue for why it wont ever be needed. That's all.
In 2013 you don't have to argue for the need for Unicode. You have to argue for the right to use antiquated, primitive 8-bit text-types. And then you choose (because you and noone else will have to choose that column-type) Unicode text-types by default.
Anything else is madness. If any tool you rely on to do this for you chooses non-Unicode by default it is broken and needs to be fixed.
There might be a million other things SQL Server should address, but this is not one of them. Nothing is wrong with text-support.
> 6. CLR Integration allows you to write a lot of things in C# (or VB.NET) [2]
You can also use a Mono plugin at Postgres, just like Perl, Python, C, C++, Lisp, Haskel, R-Cran... But it's not that, #6 was about the core functionality of the DBMS changing. For example, you can add new index types at Postgres with plugins, and people do add them. Once somebody wrote a plugin for manipulating SQL queries at what was at the time an object oritented database called Postgres. That's how deep you can go.
> 10. Unicode is there by default if you use nchar/nvarchar/ntext columns, there's no problems unless you choose to use char/varchar/text instead
Yeah, Unicode is used by default if you tell the DBMS to use Unicode... Thus, it's not the default. I'd agree that this is not a big problem.