Re: Where do I start

Steen Persson (DK) wrote:
>
> I'm a MS SQL Server DBA and I know next ot nothing about how Oracle works.

I used SQL-Server extensively in the mind 90's - so extensively that a call once to local MS support regarding a SQL-Server problem, resulted in them giving me my own name and number and being told to contact this person for technical assistance :-). (we were a MS certified development partner or something along those lines at the time)

I hated Oracle when I started using it after SQL-Server. Reason - expectations. Old story of having your cup full of tee and now trying to put some coffee into it to see how coffee taste.

Now.. I fricken love it. It is -the- best RBDMS product on market. SQL-Server is a poor second. The things that we can do in Oracle.. mind blowing. To give you an idea. I have a VLT in a data warehouse, on which I can do a SELECT COUNT(*) after the latest updates to get the current row count. It takes on average 30 seconds to run. The VLT averages around 800 million rows.

So first thing to do IMO is to empty your DBA cup of SQL-Server. Don't be like me when I first got into Oracle. :-)

> Now I need to get involved in our Oracle server (some administration and
> querying databases) so where do I start? Can any of you point me to some
> good "Oracle Beginners guide" on how to do the basic stuff?

The Oracle Concepts Guide should be your first call. As a DBA you need to know the basics of how Oracle works. The Concepts guide covers the whole thing. From db engine processes, physical strorage, logical storage, transaction/concurrency model, memory usage and so on.

If you can, get a copy of Tom Kyte's book called 'Oracle. Expert one on one'. It is a real eye opener on just how capable and kickass Oracle is.. -if- you bother to use it correctly as designed.

> I've installed the Oracle client and started to dig around to see how it
> looks, but it's not all very clear. What is the Oracle equivalent to MS SQL
> Server's Query Analyzer and Books On Line?

On-line copies of all Oracle manuals are at http://tahiti.oracle.com.

One thing to realise is that Oracle does not compare to SQL-Server ito GUI tools. Oracle's Enterprise Manager is not too bad.. Trying to be kind to it as I never used it and my personal opinion is that it is a load of crap. But many other Oracle users will disagree with me - and my choice of vim and SQL*Plus as development tools ifo things like TOAD, JDeveloper and Eclipse.. :-)

--
Billy