Advantages of SQLServer vs. MySQL for C#/.NET4 Cloud Applications

I am considering building several C#/.NET4 applications all using a central, cloud based database. In addition, several LAMP (MySQL) web shops will be accessing the cloud DB.

MySQL is the database that I'm most familiar with, and my default selection for the cloud DB would be MySQL on Amazon or Joyent. However, I was wondering what development "extras" are available for SQLServer in VisualStudio 2010 that are no开发者_StackOverflowt available for MySQL. Are there any "killer features" that should make me consider SQLServer instead of MySQL?

SQL Server 2005+:

• WITH (AKA Common Table Expressions (CTEs)) syntax
• Superior View support (can do subqueries, etc)
• Analytical functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK..)
• Reporting functionality provided by SSRS is free.. well, included in the license cost
• CLR to create .NET code to extend database functionality IE regex
• Database mail

From security point of view a database should not be able to send an email. This is a database server and should act like this only. It is great if it can make coffee, but this is just an extra feature which hackers will find most interesting to exploit.

I am using Postgresql with npgsql driver http://pgfoundry.org/projects/npgsql/ and it works fine. I see people use Postgresql AIMs on Amazon: http://www.stickybit.se/load-balancing-postgresql-in-the-amazon-cloud with a load balancer.