First off – not trying to kindle any flame wars here, just trying to broaden my (your) horizons a bit, gather some ideas (maybe I’m missing out on something cool, it’s the most used Open Source RDBMS after all) and to somewhat compare the two despite being a difficult thing to do correctly / objectively. Also I’m leaving aside here performance comparisons and looking at just the available features, general querying experience and documentation clarity as this is I guess most important for beginners. So just a list of points I made for myself, grouped in no particular order.