A good article Steve, thank you.

There is one sentence that I would like to comment on.

The data is the more important asset we work with and all our efforts...

In my experience the "just want to hear how everyone is doing" meeting can often turn into the manager talking for the full hour with nobody else getting a word...

For managers the best kind of meeting is the meta-meeting. A meeting in which you do nothing other than discuss other meetings.

@L' Eomot Inversé

Yes, that is something that SQL Server doesn't do well.

However the competitors are no better on this front.

What is SQL Server not good at?

Defining constraints declaratively.

The CREATE ASSERTION statement has been in the SQL standard since 1992. Microsoft still haven't implemented it.

If you have...