I guess if you getting into the DSLR market for the first time you should look mostly at what lenses you are planning on using, and how much they would cost plus the body.
Most photography enthusiasts spend a lot more on lenses, filters and such than on the main camera body. Most people I know that are into photography (also professionally) are using canon equipment, but that might just be because they started there, and could replace their entire set for an equally performing nikon set if it weren't for all the compatible stuff they already have.
The thing is that you can take most snapshots on any system, you only need a dslr and potentially expensive lens to take the difficult shots: things like zoom, fast motion, low light, control over depth of field and such.
I'd first make a list of situations you want/need to photograph with an SLR but you cannot using a compact camera. This might be a surprisingly short list.
Personally this is the reason i've not bought into this market in the first place: over 95% of shots i want to take i can with a good quality compact. If i switched to a bulky dslr system i could do much more, but it'd be so big i would mostly not take it with me and miss more opportunities that i'd gain by getting the dslr.
Dollar for dollar, you should probably wonder what shots you could take with a cheap-ish dslr system compared to a (very) high end compact like a sony RX100-IV or -V. These are still very expensive for compact camera's, but you'd be hard pressed to find many situations where you cannot take the shot with one of those but you could with a dslr... apart for extreme dark conditions (or extremely narrow field of depth) or very wide angle photo's.
For the latter case taking a few shots and stitching them after is pretty realistic though.
