disagree with the general message here on MySQL.

MySQL is a very capable database. We have a system with around 300 tenants in a Saas environment on AWS that runs most tables on mariadb (MySQL clone)

DF is now starting to play well with MySQL although it is using an ODBC driver.

in addition yes for someone just starting initial steps in MS SQL are somewhat simpler at first

as far as DATE and DATETIME columns now all of these support both DATE as well as DATETIME columns. Some of them also have different DATETIME data types depending on the range to support