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Do people here actually like the Oracle database?
Especially when compared to SQL Server.
It seems everything I did so easily in SQL Server seems to be difficult or even impossible in Oracle.
So far I like the for loops and the some_table.some_column%type type declarations.
I'm not looking for Oracle hate or a religious war.
I really just want to know what's so great about Oracle so I can enjoy it too (so far it's been mostly frustration).
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Sander Rossel wrote: I really just want to know what's so great about Oracle
Well, it's got a cooler name...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Worked at a place once that had MS developer tools w/MVC front-end with an Oracle backend. Oracle has a set of plugins/extensions for VS, that makes integrating with VS and Entity Framework, a lot easier.
It took a while to get used to some things, like schemas (oracle) versus individual databases(SQL Server), etc. PL-SQL is nice, but I found that many people would put too much business logic in there, for my taste.
Sander Rossel wrote: so far it's been mostly frustration
It can be, no doubt.
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Slacker007 wrote: Oracle has a set of plugins/extensions for VS, that makes integrating with VS and Entity Framework, a lot easier.
We wanted to use those, but then...Slacker007 wrote: many people would put too much business logic in there
Those people took over and used their own tools... Now EVERYTHING is a package 
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Worked at one place where the Oracle packages make web calls back out to services, including constructing and posting XML messages to SAP.. Jeez! 
Oracle is (IMO) more powerful than SQL Server, but I'm not sure that's always a good thing? It seems to make it too easy to create a bad system architecture in the long run.
I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Brent Jenkins wrote: Oracle is (IMO) more powerful than SQL Server, but I'm not sure that's always a good thing? It seems to make it too easy to create a bad system architecture in the long run.
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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." 
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...!?
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 SQL Server always locks entire pages).
Then again, such locking must come at a cost?
But honestly, after hearing about how powerful Oracle is supposed to be I'm REALLY VERY disappointed now that I actually have to work with it.
Luckily, this is the point where you are going to tell me I'm wrong and how powerful Oracle really is 
[Edit]
Oracle doesn't even handle CASING PROPERLY and it still has a MAXIMUM_OBJECT_NAME_LEN!
Sorry, just thought about it and wanted to include it in this post rant 
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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.
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Vark111 wrote: 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.
That's really interesting actually.
I never use cursors in SQL Server for that reason.
I've come across them A LOT in Oracle (although Oracle has a few different cursor types I believe).
Then again, databases shouldn't really be doing loops in the first place 
I'm going to check that out and add it to the "cool in Oracle" list though
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Sander Rossel wrote: I've heard "Oracle has packages[^]", but I fail to see what's so great about that.
Think of them as namespaces, that usually helps. And complaining about the existence of access modifiers is just silly, how do you know it's only going to be your own software in the database.
Why do you think there are access modifiers in DotNet?
Sander Rossel wrote: Next to that Oracle doesn't support booleans/bits,
The bit IS a numeric type. 
Sander Rossel wrote: Good luck with the documentation too, not nearly as comprehensive as SQL Server.
Unless there's some documentation outside of MSDN and Technet that I haven't found, that is simply not true.
Sander Rossel wrote: 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 SQL Server always locks entire pages).
There is no such thing as a page lock in Oracle. Oracle has row-level locks and table-level locks.
Sander Rossel wrote: But honestly, after hearing about how powerful Oracle is supposed to be I'm REALLY VERY disappointed now that I actually have to work with it.
Actually, it depends on what you're doing, OLTP -> Oracle but when doing OLAP I'd say SQL Server has the upper hand.
But that would also be to simplified. It really depends.
Sander Rossel wrote: Oracle doesn't even handle CASING PROPERLY
So it's not case sensitive, but that's something you should be used to from VB.
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: complaining about the existence of access modifiers is just silly
I just don't think they're necessary in the database. And that a header file is the most obnoxious way to support it
When I first started using Oracle I've searched for a good hour trying to find some weird error, then found out I updated my function declaration in the body, but not the header...
Jörgen Andersson wrote: The bit IS a numeric type.
Yes, but one that supports only two values and is correctly converted to bool in C# (and somewhat awkwardly in SSMS).
Jörgen Andersson wrote: Unless there's some documentation outside of MSDN and Technet that I haven't found, that is simply not true.
Maybe I just don't know where to look
I keep ending up on oracle.com, but so far I haven't been able to find what I'm looking for (then again, searching for table variables in Oracle isn't going to give you what you're looking for).
Jörgen Andersson wrote: So it's not case sensitive, but that's something you should be used to from VB.
At least VB doesn't convert EVERYTHING TO UPPER CASE for me 
The casing is the least of my problems though. I just wonder why they can't simply support RegularCasing in 2016.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Exactly. Correct me if I am wrong, but it is usually just "one" database in Oracle with nNumber of schemas.
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Usually yes, you can create several databases in one instance, but it's pointless.
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I've only ever used Oracle once on a project that involved a third-party system that used it. After decades of MS SQL Server it felt like I'd gone back a decade. The interface and tools were so naff. It's like going from Visual Studio to working with java.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote: It's like going from Visual Studio to working with java
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Java, I think, is the big reason why Oracle is so popular. May departments in the U.S. Military uses Oracle, Oracle forms, and Java for most of their database apps and many DoD programming job descriptions require knowledge and experience with Java and Oracle.
When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Do people here actually like the Oracle database?
Yes, I learned my first SQL statements on Oracle 7. Great product at the time, compared to alternatives like DBaseIV.
Sander Rossel wrote: I really just want to know what's so great about Oracle so I can enjoy it too (so far it's been mostly frustration).
You're over 15 years too late to 'enjoy' the Oracle database-server.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: You're over 15 years too late to 'enjoy' the Oracle database-server.
Thought as much 
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Frustration TimesTen? No thanks! 
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