Re: Sybase vs Oracle - which is better?

    Actually, explicit cursors provide your fastest and most reliable access, as you are able to trap the TOO_MANY_ROWS (in Oracle) exception. This way you are absolutely positive that there will never be a situation where your queries error out.

    I have a question. I had a pretty simple (to state, that is) problem that turned out to be a little bit of a bear (for me, anyway) to program. It was this: I need to select a single record from a table, bookending the column values with the column name formatted as XML tags; each on a separate lines then returning it as a single string. If there is a ANSI SQL statement that would do this, I would love to hear it.

--Rich

Michael Bilhartz wrote:

> P. Larsen wrote in message <740ue7$7ng11_at_news.uscg.mil>...
> >To me, thinking of temporary
> >tables still "smells like" thinking of files. And THAT is a relational
> >database misconception I've seen in many Oracle programmers ... resulting
 in
> >many program problems and strange designs.
>
> Funny, that's the way I feel about cursors. Someone can't conceptualize a
> solution relationally, so they process the data procedurally.
>
> I think that temp tables are sometimes a crutch, for not being able to
> conceptualize a single relational expression to get from here to there.
> They break it into chunks that they can be dealt with with just a couple of
> joins, or that they can optimze more easily.
>
> Some people use cursors and temp tables, though, because they are the best
> or only way to do some things.
>
> Regards,
> -Mike Bilhartz

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Richard Markle
Programmer/Analyst for Distributed Collaborative Enterprises
(310)822-1511 x450
"Give me ambiguity or give me something else.."
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