Some Oracle praise?

Duncan Edwards Jones

The type declarations - only that. Nothing else at all.

Richard Deeming

Slacker007 wrote:

schemas (oracle)

SQL Server has schemas too[^]. They used to be tied to user accounts in SQL 2000, but that was fixed in SQL 2005[^].

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

Richard Deeming

Sander Rossel wrote:

what's so great about Oracle

What, you mean apart from having to pay a percentage of your initial purchase cost every year as a "maintenance fee"? :rolleyes:

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

Shelby Robertson

Sander Rossel wrote:

Do people here actually like the Oracle database?

No. We have to support our project for both oracle and sql server, and oracle is a constant source of consternation. Like someone else said, the tools are from the stone age. And don't even get me started on on sub releases of the ODAC managed .net driver and half-assed implementation of their own database encryption with poor documentation on what features actually function.

CPallini wrote:

You cannot argue with agile people so just take the extreme approach and shoot him. :Smile:

Wendelius

Sander Rossel wrote:

Do people here actually like the Oracle database?

Yep

Sander Rossel wrote:

Especially when compared to SQL Server.

Well, both are good and have their place. One benefit with Oracle is to be able to run it on different platforms. On the other hand SQL Server admin tools are more intuitive and so on. I'd say that the differences become meaningful in environments that have special requirements.

Sander Rossel wrote:

It seems everything I did so easily in SQL Server seems to be difficult or even impossible in Oracle.

Any examples?

Sander Rossel

Brent Jenkins wrote:

Oracle is (IMO) more powerful than SQL Server

I've heard that a lot (it's what every Oracle user says), but why though? I've asked people, but never got a satisfying answer. One person even said "SQL Server can't handle big databases that are larger than 30GB." :wtf: I've heard "Oracle has packages[^]", but I fail to see what's so great about that. I have a header for public access and my package body can have some private stuff. First of all, the entire header is duplicated in the body, which really annoys me (and I know other languages have it too). But why would you want private functions in your database anyway? They're only going to be used by your own software and it's not like you get all those private functions in your intellisense! A package, to me, is really only a set of functions and procedures that can be edited by only one person at a time (or the last one who saves overwrites the other's changes). Besides, if you want to "group" stuff in SQL Server just use a schema (I know, not entirely the same). If anything, packages are "nice" at best. Next to that Oracle doesn't support booleans/bits, it only has one numeric type that fits all, it doesn't have table variables like SQL Server has, you can't write ad-hoc scripts with some variables and return them in a table (I haven't found it anyway). And forget about decent tooling too! The company where I currently work even created their own Toad-like tool for working with Oracle because no tool sufficiently did what they wanted (back in the 80's early 90's). I use Oracle SQL Developer, but that's an amateurish play toy compared to even the Express version of SQL Server Management Studio. Good luck with the documentation too, not nearly as comprehensive as SQL Server. And we're talking about one of the most expensive databases out there (if not THE most expensive)! :~ Here comes the best part, Oracle people now tell me I was "spoiled" by SQL Server and its features and tooling and now I fail to see how awesome Oracle is... WHAT THE...!? :wtf: The only plausible thing I've heard so far is that Oracle is faster because it locks at cell level while SQL Server locks at row level and often escalates to locking an entire page (and and I've heard an Oracle user say S

Sander Rossel

As I understand a schema in Oracle is more like a separate database in SQL Server and a schema like in SQL Server doesn't exist in Oracle.

Read my (free) ebook Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly. Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles here on CodeProject.

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

Regards, Sander

Sander Rossel

Oracle has a super fast optimized algorithm for one query in particular: SELECT MONEY FROM YOUR_BANK_ACCOUNT :D

Read my (free) ebook Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly. Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles here on CodeProject.

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

Regards, Sander

Sander Rossel

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

You're over 15 years too late to 'enjoy' the Oracle database-server.

Thought as much :sigh:

Read my (free) ebook Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly. Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles here on CodeProject.

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

Regards, Sander

RossMW

The best part of Oracle is that I rarely have to use it anymore. I even hate the Gigs of pollution you had to install just to talk damned thing. :mad: So now when I have to talk to it from VS I just add one file to my project (Oracle.ManagedDataAccess.dll) and then have all the access I need. The bare minimum :)

Vark111

You probably could use schemas in SQL Server the same as they're used in Oracle, it's just that no one does because it's so easy to create a new database.

Sander Rossel

Mika Wendelius wrote:

One benefit with Oracle is to be able to run it on different platforms.

Yes, that's one I heard and a very plausible one at that! :D Good thing we run it on Windows servers :laugh:

Mika Wendelius wrote:

Any examples?

Table variables, simply declaring some variables and using them (in all manner of ways). For example, I simply wanted to something like the following:

DECLARE @Names TABLE (Name VARCHAR(100))

INSERT INTO @Names
SELECT Name
FROM Person.Person

SELECT @Names

SELECT Column
FROM Table
WHERE Name IN @Names -- Not sure if I need a sub select from the top of my head

DECLARE @SomeText VARCHAR(100)
SET @SomeText = "Not doable in Oracle"
SELECT @SomeText

I think the first thing with the table variable just isn't possible. My coworker, who worked with Oracle for about 30 years now, looked at me in disbelief and asked why I wanted to do such a thing anyway :~ The second, declaring a variable, assigning it a value and simply selecting it (FROM DUAL???) is just so awkward. Having multiple result sets in one procedure/session isn't possible. For example, from my software I want to insert an order, its details and do some auditing/logging and check if everything is in the database as expected.

SELECT * FROM SalesOrder
SELECT * FROM SalesOrderDetail
SELECT * FROM AuditLog

I have to execute the statements one by one and check the results, no way to do it all at once and get the results next to each other. Please, I beg of you, prove me wrong! It would make my life so much easier :D Maybe I'm in a "SQL Server state of mind" and Oracle just is another paradigm? Like OOP vs. Functional? And I'm simply missing it? :confused:

Read my (free) ebook Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly. Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles here on CodeProject.

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

Regards, Sander

Vark111

Sander Rossel wrote:

I've heard that a lot (it's what every Oracle user says), but why though?

One thing I find intriguing about Oracle PL/SQL Packages is that you can do row-level operations with loops (i.e. cursors) but still have set-based performance. There's this (well-deserved, imo) attitude in SQL Server land that cursors are the work of the devil (entirely plausible), and any code that uses cursors will murder any semblance of performance (seen it myself). So you go through a lot of mental gymnastics to convert row-level operations with a bunch of if/else conditions into a series of set-based queries. So the code now performs the way it should, but it doesn't really *read* the way it should. That seems to not be the case in Oracle. You can loop with a cursor and do all sorts of imperative coding, but the performance hit is negligible. Disclaimer: I'm not really a fan of Oracle, it's just that our company uses it to death. We're one of those "50% of the business logic is buried somewhere in the database" type companies. Me? I prefer a dumb datastore and keep my business logic in places that can be reused easily.

Wendelius

Schema is used for example to define an ownership and to separate logically different components into separate areas, in both systems. A separate database in SQL Server is very different from schema.

Jorgen Andersson

It''s interesting to read the comments in this thread. Having worked for many years on Oracle, but now having changed company to work with SQL server, I have quite different experience. SQL Server is a much less mature product. It really feels like going fifteen years back in time. Programming in T-Sql feels like using prehistoric VB, the code is totally littered with stupid prefixes like @ and #. And it lacks consistency. The worst part is probably lock handling, on Oracle I never needed to think about it, period. No flashback queries. On Oracle you can do a SELECT AS OF TIMESTAMP. Even from dropped tables. Always on failover is a really poor substitute for RAC. Half the point with clustering is gone if you can only use one node at a time. Composite indexes are only having statistics on the first column, reducing the efficiency of the optimizer considerably. No pipelined functions, at all. I can keep on going for long. On the other hand, SSIS is just brilliant.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello

Sander Rossel

I actually have a theory that PL/SQL actually stands for Polish SQL (as in Poland, the country). First, it's like Polish, I don't understand a word of what they say. Second, Polish are to us what Mexicans are to Americans, cheap labor (stealing our jobs)*. Larry just hired some cheap Polish people and let them make a database, hence Oracle and PL/SQL was born :D *Not particularly my opinion, no offence to Polish and Mexicans :D

Read my (free) ebook Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly. Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles here on CodeProject.

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

Regards, Sander

Sander Rossel

RossMW wrote:

The bare minimum :)

Still too much :D

Read my (free) ebook Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly. Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles here on CodeProject.

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

Regards, Sander

RossMW

Yep. :laugh:

Shelby Robertson