Skip to main content. Find posts, topics, and users Ask a question. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users. The second test is basically on the understanding of the basics, 1Z Oracle Database 11g: Administration I. I think hese should help me get my feet wet. What do you guys think? In other words, you will have to declare so-called reference cursor, select your data into it and then return it.
On the top of all this, you will have to create a package which will consist of the package head and package body, which in turn will include the text of your stored procedure.
Then you can deploy the package so the procedure can be finally used. The above example is just to demonstrate that generally speaking, everything in Oracle is more complex than it needs to be, and while their database engine is admittedly powerful, development and maintanence of an Oracle database is a nightmare when compared with SQL Server.
In my humble opinion, the true reasons why many people still use Oracle are: - Advanced age of the decision makers - Their stubborness and unwillingness to admit the reality. I had to work with Oracle databases for a number of years, and was lucky enough to earn respect of the Oracle DB Administrators, but I am really glad that I don't have to do it any more.
In the past, a decent resource to ask Oracle related question was [Ask Tom][3], but I am not sure whether it is still active or not. Just my 2 cents. Now, fast forward 5 years from now. To paraphrase and twist a famous comercial ask yourself "where do you want to be". That is the major, 1 difference between us and them. If your customer feels windows is the flatform of the 21st century If they look at history, really look at it, they might begin to feel a little different.
Rating ratings Is this answer out of date? Questions Comparison between Oracle and Others. Question and Answer. You Asked Hi Tom, My question is something different.
Very clear answer. Thanks Tom for your detailed reasoning. I have worked only in Oracle, but I read throght Toms book and came to know how it differs from i wud rather say how it is better from other databases. But that was just me.
My client wud not understand how oracle differs in the implementation of locking and other stuff. But now I have exactly the words to convince my client to go for Oracle Thanks a lot. Has DB2 caught up with Oracle in terms of advanced features? Tom, what is your opinion on the following white paper about Oracle vs.
November 04, - pm UTC. The group who refers to fine grained access control as a new 9i feature woops, only missed that by 3 major releases? Or that makes biased statements like "Although Oracle supports the latest SQL standards, preference is set on Oracle proprietary implementations.
Oracle has a number of index types? DB2 only has one index type? And then they say "oh yes, Oracle has this nice materialized view that can really make your queries fly, but they take some time to refresh so they really aren't that good" -- give me a break.
Or that praises the heck out of DB2's static sql implementation which is totally a kludge compared to shared sql and has no advantages over shared sql in fact has obvious downsides Is that the paper???
What do you have to do to get a correct answer in DB2? Have your queries deadlock with your updates. What DB2 do you use on all platforms? Answer -- none, they have different DB2's for different architectures. Actually -- I'm going to stop. I've never been a fan of feature for feature, tit for tat.
I like things simple, i like things concise. I find one database, any platform easier far easier then "what platform -- well, here is the flavor of product we have there" or "what problem do you have - well, here is the flavor of database you need for that, what -- your on that platform -- maybe your should change because we don't have that flavor on that platform" Yes, so it was that silly paper. I urge all of you to read it if you want. If you know Oracle, you know somethings up.
Look at manageability, they love DB2 for: "Other DB2 strengths are index management automatic index balancing , user management os-level user authorization and fine grained event handling.
Or in interoperability: "This area is a clear strength of DB2 because of its high level of integration of heterogeneous sources. The DB2 optimizer can even optimize queries for federated data sources? The adequate handling of data and document-oriented XML data sources with the opportunity to store XML documents as a column with a special data type or decomposed in relational tables brings DB2 another advantage. Tom, thanks very much for the quick response. I agree the PASS paper is somewhat biased towards DB2 - out of the 6 authors, only one or two claim to have extensive knowledge of Oracle while all seemed to have worked exclusively with DB2.
Now let me ask two more questions: 1. Do you agree with the accessment? I know we are technologists but unfortunately many times marketing related issues creep into the decision making process.
I know one reason is the high cost associated with switching to Oracle. But do you think some of the highly-publicized features such as row-level locking and multi-version read consistency Oracle has over SQL Server are not so significant to certain users? November 05, - am UTC. IBM is buying marketshare they bought informix, now when they report database marketshare they'll lump informix -- all of the flavors, redbrick, cloudscape, -- the 5 databases they bought from them with the 4 different DB2's and IDMS and so on.
Also, the others are losing marketshare -- Sybase, Ingress, et. Remember also, when you are small, it is easier to grow. I'm not a marketeer per say, I don't follow this stuff real close, but our "shrinkage" qtr to qtr was due more to less. Time will tell I suppose. Analysts such as those that write the reports aren't happy unless there is controversy. The company's programmers wrote their own software to sit on top of the Oracle database to replicate it.
Besides, Snider said, the work to migrate the company from Oracle to IBM would have taken weeks, or possibly months, of work. But IBM also would have charged extra for consulting services, Snider said. If it were just the database, he said, "it'd be a no-brainer.
I'll lay odds that its a tad more than that think about what a team of 5 -- do to development, testing, document, and manage would cost for 1 year, you are already well over k but and you haven't even begun to maintain it but oh well. I'm not naming names but I've worked on more then a couple of accounts in New York City. I don't know what you mean by the high cost of moving to Oracle so much -- it costs to move from Sybase to anything else, it is so radically different from the other databases out there.
Once people grasp the power of multi-versioning and how much easier it is to program -- it makes a big difference. The problem is, people become legendary in Sybase groups for coming up with unique techniques to solve issues like this -- having that inside knowledge of how to set up the perfect clustered index, using timestamps, never lock data -- do the concurrency control yourself, all of these neat "solutions" and then they discover "hey, you don't need to do that, why would I want to go over there where I mean nothing, where all of the knowledge I've gained over the last 10 years is useless".
Talking to those guys, thats hard. Its like trying to sell the first C compiler with an IDE to a bunch of assembler programmers who love their punch cards. A bit of resistance.
As an Oracle Profession I always wanted to answer people why Oracle and nothing else. I have got my answer. Everything was going pretty well religous wars are more fun when they are about databases , until I got to "Its like trying to sell the first C compiler with an IDE Unix is the IDE.
Staying out late with DOS is going to lead to no good end. That would be good. I haven't figured out how you could play with an IDE and learn what strtok does. It's like finding out that Mickey Mantle smokes cigarettes. I hope no kids see it. Readers wanting to do the right thing should stay away from IDE's and read Tom's chapter on n-Tier Authentication, which was clearly written prior to his becoming involved with IDE, and shows he was a good C progammer before he went astray.
November 05, - pm UTC. I don't use any IDE's personally ; I don't use debuggers either. Many people do -- hence the analogy. My favorite UI is a command line. Left out Mysql and other open source databases that work well with ecommerce. Leaving this out of the equation is like making a sandwich without the bread.
Ecommerce is the bread and butter of the Internet. It's a billion dollar enterprise that's growing. Mysql is functional for ecommerce and web platforms. It has feature limitations compared to Oracle, but the focus of it's design is the speed of select and update statements.
With the latest version of PhpAdmin, it's even easier to use. Don't forget the open source community. I sort of have to smile when I read how people think it will take five programmers a year to build replication capabilities. I'm the guy from abebooks in the CNET article. I had to build it because the native Oracle replication was too slow. December 10, - pm UTC. I've been there, done that. I know it can be done -- that is besides the point.
I've seen people write it and write it and write it. February 24, - am UTC. I don't know, what is my concern with mysql? I didn't write anything about it one way or the other here. It was not part of the question I run linux, so what?
I paid for the linux I'm running. Is it free? It cost money to put on my machines i need a supported version, someone to call and say "hey, fix this". I don't rewrite OS stuff so I cannot do it. It cost money for me to run out and buy a pcmcia modem since the silly winmodem didn't work.
It cost money for my time to do all of this. It all costs money, all of it does. I'll betcha it costs more for me to run linux right now then windoze --I'm only successful at doing it cause I actually know unix pretty well.
Most people, most end users, well, they would not be able to do it. It is getting there but -- I would bet that the cost of me owning linux is higher then the cost of me owning windows.
I'm in a big old "do it yourself" position. If you are running a single database for 5 people, well, not sure that is the right model. We run single databases for thousands of people. We use economies of scale here.
We would not run Oracle and put 5 users on it. We use a hosted model for small user communities like that. They pay a fee -- we run their stuff in a database with tons of other people. Running a database for every 5 people just doesn't make sense. What I find is "penny wise, pound foolish".
Most small companies, upon losing their data in a disaster -- fail. Of every businesses that suffer a data center disaster - more than 40 will never reopen - fewer then 10 are still about after two year. It is the mindset here, not the software that causes this. The "gotta be cheap" -- well, you get exactly what you pay for.
I've nothing against open source. Hey, if you want to download free, build it, deploy it to run your business -- more power to you. In all parts of the world, price an important factor. You certainly have no monopoloy on it over there. The real world is nothing like school and losing your data is absolutely catastrophic.
Database life is not a "do over" like some kind of high school or college assignment. It often means "game over" for a business. Until recently MySQL did not even support the concept of a proper transaction and MS Access still does not support a proper transaction. I will also say in this lousy economy if you have a job keep it because there are very few out there and I would not go risking my neck on "Freeware Databases" and "Dinky MS solutions" that are simply an accident waiting to happen.
All too often I hear people especially developers and their managers whining about the cost of Oracle and then totally ignore the fact that their solution takes 10 man years of effort often reaching into millions of dollars to deploy. You need to get some real perspective on this, the cost of Oracle is totally cheap compared to the alternatives which include all the other RDBMS Solutions available on earth including "out of business" due to total failure somewhere down the road.
Basically, DB2 on unix is about the equivalent of freeware, IBM bought Informix with the idea of getting a database that actually works on windoze, unix etc. In fact two years ago IBM were giving away DB2 on unix in Silicon Valley trying to break the Oracle stronghold but it didn't work people saw the product was weak and lacked functionality and manageability period. DB2 on the mainframe is not bad but we aren't seeing too many people running over to the local computer store or asking IBM for a ESA these days.
In a nutshell IBM are almost out of the database business especially on unix and they are selling predominently into traditional IBM shops and nowhere else. Tom, i admire you patience vs other database product The only reason to me where you would have to choose another system, is the price of an Oracle lincence Just make your PM understand that.
And there is no people who are willing to work with a database product other than Oracle. I meen get realist, if your buisness is serious, 9i rock so much you just can't get something else.. What about MySQL? David, March 28, - pm UTC. Oracle was at the top, followed by MySQL. But this surprized me: "MySQL 4.
If the text of an incoming query has a byte-for-byte match with a cached query, MySQL can retrieve the results directly from the cache without compiling the query, getting locks or doing index accesses.
This query caching will be effective only for tables with few updates because any table updates that clear the cache to guarantee correct results are always returned.
March 28, - pm UTC. In Oracle we call this a "materialized view" I would think. It is not the shared pool, that is where we cache execution plans. I never go tit for tat like that. Like I said Each database has literally thousands of features and functions.
If you could give us some links or benchmarks? Help needed! Ther say they have an impact analysis on that. Truth is Their main claim is that thay need to reduce TCO and Oracle is too expensive. What do you have to say about it and where can I find good arguments against that crazyness as it seems to me? Thank you! August 22, - pm UTC. I would be concerned about that company frankly. Open source does not, has not, will not mean "free" Linux actually costs money, if you want support, stability, yadda yadda yadda.
Same with the DB. If a couple of thousand for software is deemed too much, i would be worried what my salary at such a company might be deemed someday??? November 16, - pm UTC. Hello Tom, Thank you very much for this clear cut answers. We are presently using using Oracle 8i 8. That group claims that maintenance will be less and its very, very fast when you scan billion rows. I am looking for some literature for comparison.
Scanning a billion rows is somewhat, ahh, limited by your IO system more then anything else. Our goal actually is to not have to scan a billion rows -- with things like materialized views, query rewrite, bitmapped indexes, 3 types of partitioning, the ability to use clusters without having to statically partition data , simultaneous INGEST load and DIGEST query -- try that in teradata. At the end of the day -- ask them for hard, factual, scienfically backed proof points.
Eg: list out N maintenance things that are provably "less" in teradata. Also -- remember, teradata works really well on proprietary, sole source, single vendor hardware made by -- well -- the same company that makes teradata. Their big database implementation do not run on open systems, commodity hardware. Tam said: We use a hosted model for small user communities like that. Where can I find more information about the hosted model? A reader, November 17, - pm UTC. Hi Tom, Our company is evaluating an option to use in-memory database instead of Oracle.
Some of these in-memory database companies, like Ants Software or TimesTen software, are claiming that they are atleast 5 to 80 times faster than relational databases. Do you know any problems with using in-memory database? Does Oracle has any product which is similar to in-memory database? Thanks, Ketan. November 21, - am UTC. I'm very sure there is something very specific they can do faster. I'm also very very sure there are lots of stuff we do much faster as well. Question is -- are you doing something that you cannot do and excell at doing with Oracle?
Most times, we can "fix" that in the implementation your design. These database things are pretty darn fast when used properly. It would be fairly easy to design an in memory "database" that was "faster" than Oracle. This is assuming that all you want is a fast method to "store" data and "retrieve" data. It is assuming that you don't want: 1. Robust recovery 2. Data Consistancy 3.
Transactions 4. I would not call it a database, maybe a memory structure or shared memory structure that contains data, but not a database. I think in momory database would be much much slower than a datbase using disks as storage. I love working with Oracle. Some of the in-memory databases do provide persistent data storage, recovery mechanism and real time data retrival.
I would like to convince the team who is evaluating in-memory databases that in long run it is not going to scale and might turn out a bad decision. These databases may not solve locking issues, may not help in all recovery scenario, may not integrate with other tools, can't work on different platforms, like Oracle it won't even allow you to look into internal structures to figure out the problem.
I want to know if anyone had any bad experiences or heard any bad experiences about such databases which I can share it with evaluating team.
A reader, December 28, - pm UTC. You said --x-- That is the major, 1 difference between us and them. If they look at history, really look at it, they might begin to feel a little different --x-- I see that this is a pretty old thread. Technology has advaned a lot in the last 2 years, both in database and OS areas. I am a hardcore Oracle professional, but am finding it increasingly dificult to hold my own in a entirely MS shop.
All the fileservers, printservers, desktops, apps are MS. Shrink-wrapped applications we bring inhouse come with their own, you guessed it, SQL Server database. The only "island" in this MS sea is our data warehouse Oracle on Sun hardware. How can I counter this? Like you said, it is futile to compare technical features on a checklist since their implementation differs so much as to be a meaningless comparison.
Are there any definitive high-level whitepapers targeted for upper management that lean towards Oracle? December 29, - am UTC. To me, I still see lots of choice out there point being -- depends on who you work for. Lots of CFO's are seeing that as well recognizing that the major costs of their systems are ongoing maintenance, NOT software related at all.
It costs less, provided more value to have N databases than M databases where N is significantly smaller than M. Thats a fact. I don't care whose database it is. This thread is over 3 years old but not much has changed in the MS product. All of the locking and read-consistency problems are still there from 3 years ago.
Another issue that Tom did not mention is that SQL Server uses its transaction logs for rollback information, so doing a transaction log backups is very resource intensive. Our tran log backups failed on this very busy DB. By the time we could restart the tran log backups the tran log was 65GB. It took 1. The users were very unhappy. If this happened in Oracle, the tran logs wouldn't be that big to begin with, and nobody would feel the pinch from backing up 65GB of tran logs because it's just a series of simple file copies, unlike the MS world.
There are other architectural drawbacks that have real-world significance. Even MS says "We don't scale up And it is true. The DB and the platform it runs on runs out of gas in a hurry. So to get more performance, you must partition your DB, and your application must be aware of the partitioning. Oracle has a lot more room to grow and can do it without dinking with the app.
Yes, SQL Server may cost less, but you get what you pay for. January 20, - pm UTC. It is not called SQL Server for nothing sitting here in Yukons coming, sometime.
Please hold the flame war but With the exception of some of Oracle's deeper features such as analytics and RAC it held it's own on features we regularly use. I don't want to start a flame war here but from a stability and standard features review I found that there seems to be little holding our company back from looking seriously at replacing our Oracle installation with PostgreSQL.
This would, of course, be a long winding road but I was curious to hear from the user community regarding PostgreSQL vs. Oracle because to my eye they compare favoribly, except in price. I also have to admit that I'm an Oracle shareholder and finding a free product that has many of the same features as Oracle was disheartening.
And just for the record we also evaluated mySQL but it never made it out of the gate with it's lack of stored procedures.
I'm impressed with PGS's robustness but I've also noticed the following: 1. The capability is an add-on module, for starters, so there is not the same "stability" i. There also seems to be very little documentation.
There are tools for Oracle, both built-in and third-party. Red Gate are also extremely easy to use and powerful compared to Toad, which has a byzantine and complex user interface Oracle is a multi-platform database and it dates from the original RDBMS implementations generation one of the first which competed to replace older systems , so it has a lot of layers at install which can be very challenging to deal with.
Cade Roux Cade Roux DCookie DCookie Rob van Laarhoven Rob van Laarhoven 8, 1 1 gold badge 29 29 silver badges 48 48 bronze badges. Because, regardless of the Master's opinions, popular programming environments C , Java with Netbeans, Borland etc evolved towards the latter because that's what helps the "fools" of the world to be productive.
The programming tools that got popular sure feel more like improved VB than like improved Lisp, don't they? Microsoft already dominate that market. For the kind of customers considering Oracle, this isn't a problem. Yeah, it pisses me off too, but there is a reason Larry is richer than you and me : — Ronnis. Oracle has a whole range of GUI's to assist you. I find it hard to understand. But I'm aware that the problem is my lack of knowledge.
M, I am not ranting against Oracle in any way. My question is predicated on reading and evaluating other people's claims. Oracle might have greatest tools of them all at least, per you - others say differently but the Master Po story does not constitute evidence. Don't ask me to constitute evidence about something I did not state. I never even hinted that oracle has the greatest tools of them all, I said there are tools for every task Oracle or third party. Name me a task and I'll provide you with a tool.
Justin Cave Justin Cave k 22 22 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Maybe virtualbox pre-built appliances are the answer for these developers Randy Randy 16k 1 1 gold badge 34 34 silver badges 52 52 bronze badges. Michael Broughton Michael Broughton 3, 12 12 silver badges 12 12 bronze badges.
The Overflow Blog. Please use. What the Daily WTF? Register Login. Why the I-Hate-Oracle Club? This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it. Reply Quote 5 1 Reply Last reply. Reply Quote 1 1 Reply Last reply. Here is why I hate them: Runs on Linux? Lousy Tools Completely unintuitive toolset. Reply Quote 4 1 Reply Last reply.
Small consolation that it probably looks consistently horrible on all platforms. The admin "tools" isn't a tool something that's supposed to make your life easier? The whole thing seems like 'Consultingware' see 'Joel on Software'. How often does a company have to call in an army of high-paid consultants must The data type issues have already been mentioned, and the wonderful mandatory 'REF' cursors.
I hate the ongoing FUD campaign yes, beating Microsoft at their own game The client-side footprint is ridiculous. NET just to get the client-access libraries, you're still giving up a couple hundred MB of disk space. What's up with the line editing commands?
Does it think it's still running on a dumb terminal, like an emulated arcade game running under MAME?! I had a friend at college who masochistically wrote his entire final-year programming project using 'sed', the UNIX line-editor.
Lack of a built-in, returnable 'boolean' type. I know this is personal preference but it still irks me. Does anyone else find the phrase "emperor's new clothes" springs to mind? Reply Quote 2 1 Reply Last reply. Reply Quote 0 X 1 Reply Last reply.
Darren said: call in an army of high-paid consultants must Goff said: 1. Goff said: 2. There is no possible excuse for that abomination. Goff said: 5. The problem is that they have so damn much of it that they are constantly breaking their links, etc. Goff said: 6. Arrogance without end Similar things can be said about Mein fuhrer Gates, but I definitely agree Goff said: 7. Goff said: 8. Again - just trying to keep the arguments honest, - Chris. Reply Quote -2 1 Reply Last reply.
ChrisRLong said: just trying to keep the arguments honest But this forum isn't supposed to be about honest debate [; ]. MS-Haters have Slashdot. So, , "-1, Troll" for your rational not anti-Oracle enough arguments [:P]. Reply Quote 2 M 1 Reply Last reply. Reply Quote 0 1 Reply Last reply. Miss a paren? Guess what ain't going to work for you?! Hey another good one- easy way to sell those Oracle Professional Services guys- let's make it easy to install the client to a different location on accident and let's make it so that you have to guess which TNSNAMES.
And then, just to piss people off, let's change core filenames a lot. You're all familiar with TNSPing. Let's make it TNSPing Now we're talking. THEN- just to make it easy for the people selling software that's expected to be generically used with no particular version of Oracle, let's change all the client access DLL's with each version! Orcl can bankrupt the ISV's that use their data access lib's through their helpdesks!
Most Windows people hate this damn thing because the space screws everything up. You can also configure the Oracle base directory when installing your software. Though, like most software, it probably wouldn't like a path with a space in it. Alex said: Oracle is in their tenth revision. SQL Plus Worksheet? ISQL Plus? Alex said: and just take a quick look at the number one tool. TOAD is free for the base version, which is why it's so popular. Plenty have figured it out, it's also the most documented and written about database in the world.
Your heart bleeds for me, really. Actually, it is up to the database. But you would need to gather statistics on the tables which you need to do in SQL Server too. And full table scans aren't necessarily bad, they're appropriate in some circumstances.
Do you know how adorable you're being right now? Please point me in the direction of software that does this. And I have no idea where you came up with the "bring in a health-check consultant" line.
Learn the f'ing database, all the documentation is FREE, the database download is FREE, and there are hundreds of books on the topic, and decades of usenet posts, and dozens of websites. Get off your ass and learn the thing, make some money, and stop whinging. Nested tables are an area of active research by database theorists and have been argued to be "OK" by many theorists.
Burleson is stopped understanding Oracle 8 years ago. I'd ignore him. In summary, I think if you spent more time learning and less time whining, you'd be much happier in your job, make more money, and may actually get productive, as opposed to the sorry state you seem to be in at the moment.
Reply Quote -3 1 Reply Last reply. Darren said: Yes, the Java-infested installer is horrible. It does the job. Live with it. Darren said: The admin "tools" isn't a tool something that's supposed to make your life easier? And you can configure where Oracle is installed. Right, only all of the world's military systems are written in Ada. Go back to VB, bubba. Darren said: How often does a company have to call in an army of high-paid consultants must About as often as Oracle, actually, if you have a serious database.
And more if you have a very serious database. Ask Verizon how much money they sink into their SQL-Server based billing system, which was chosen for non-technical reasons? Darren said: The data type issues have already been mentioned, and the wonderful mandatory REF cursors. Holy crap, this is stupid. Let me spell it out for you: a REF is a pointer stored in the database.
It violates the relational model, it's evil, etc. Darren said: The client-side footprint is ridiculous. Yes the client install is big. You irk me. Life sucks, get a helmet. What bizarro world do you live in? Separation of interface and implementation is the core concept of modular programming AND object oriented programming. Reply Quote -1 J 2 Replies Last reply.
A "database" in SQL Server terminology is just a logical grouping of database objects, users, and data files. Closest thing Oracle has to this is the "schema" , which is private to a user. It's a different thing that an Oracle database instance, which is the equivalent to creating a new master SQLServer database. Creating a new Oracle DB shouldn't take 6 hours, though. Something failed along the way, might be a network thing , etc. There are logs that you can read to find out.
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