Re: Oracle vs. Sybase troubles

On Tue, 21 Mar 2000 21:16:27 -0500, Thomas Kyte <tkyte_at_us.oracle.com> wrote:

>
>>Lastly in my wordy cry for help is the UNION. Why does a union in
>>Sybase preserve the size and type of its respective columns, but Oracle
>>promotes 4byte (integers) to 8byte (doubles) and sizes varchar2()'s to
>>accomodate the largest member of the union? Most importantly to me, is
>>there a way to preserve 4byte (integers) in unions in Oracle?
>
>Oracle does not have a 4byte integer -- there are NUMBERS and that is it. (there
>are no 8byte doubles either -- only numbers). There is nothing to preserve --
>as they weren't there in the first place.
>

Hehehe!

You forgot to mention that in ORACLE we do not have to unload-reload-reindex-recluster data when we want to change an indexed NUMBER(8) to NUMBER(18). We just ALTER the table, in place. Takes all of 0.5 second, any volume. Try that with Sybase or sql server and their silly "smallint"s and "int"s and "double"s...

But then again, ORACLE is the one that "needs lots of DBA intervention", yadda-yadda. Of course.

Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_nsw.bigpond.net.au.nospam
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/the_Den/index.html Received on Wed Mar 22 2000 - 00:00:00 CST