MrB398

What did the team fail to understand? Table relationships? Foreign keys? Indexes? Or something more advanced? Through my career, I've spent a lot of time learning how to store large data sets in the most optimized database structure possible, which in turn yields much shorter query times

I notice you speak highly of TSQL. What is the largest advantage TSQL provides over someone not using it?

What is your opinion on MySQL? I've been able to accomplish very complex tasks with ease using MySQL along with .NET & code first, such as loading millions of records into memory, performing billions of searches (using parallel processing), and pushing results back to MySQL.

Totally agree with you here. I remember how shocked I was at the performance boost when I first setup a project on SSD a few years ago.