Memory Issues ms-sql vs. mysql

[jeff fisher]

MS-SQL standard can address up to 2 GB of ram. No more, but you will find cases where it will stop short of that [1.7 GB bug]. We have about 9 GB of data in our MS-SQL DB and we are getting quite a few ODBC time out errors, mostly due to a pretty crappy DB design along with some silly user problems [No, don't turn off the power to the SQL server when I'm gone - that is bad. No, don't just copy 3 million records to a new table [found 4 tables with the same data in it], Yes, you should see me about creating a new database first,...].

I'm testing out migrating everything to MySQL but was wondering if MySQL has a memory cap like MS-SQL does? How does it handle memory issues compared to MS-SQL? How can I tune MySQL memory usage? MS-SQL has this habit of never letting go of what it has in ram and sucking up as much ram as your license can handle sending everything else to the disk.