Microsoft is Pain

So I'm taking a client/server database course this quarter. Now, I'm no stranger to working with databases. I've done a few projects of varying size in MySQL and PHP, most of which I enjoyed thoroughly. (Yes, I'm a database weirdo. Sue me.) PHP's database access is straightforward and sensible: send SQL statements to the database, and PHP will turn the results into arrays or objects, whichever you prefer.

Microsoft, on the other hand, take the approach of Steamy Pile of Crap.

Cursors? Why on earth do you need to walk forwards and backwards through a dataset? Server-side keysets? Yes, let's bog down the database server even more.

Seriously, I've never had to write so much code to accomplish so little. So many damn ODBC wrapper functions. Sigh.

(I'm done ranting now. I promise.)