Re: SQL Server Yukon

Most of your comments are along the lines of ... but that feature isn't any help to me ... which is fair enough but Oracle having useless features for years isn't really a winning argument to me. Specific comments embedded.

"Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1067263636.748400_at_yasure...
> Comments in-line.
>
> Niall Litchfield wrote:
>
> >Well some have analogies and some aren't there in Oracle (don't know
about
> >10 haven't seen it).
> >
> >For example what version of Oracle allows
> >
> >multiple (> 2) programming languages in the database?
> >
> Is it a big deal whether it is "in" or "out"? Isn't the important
> question whether the language
> can be used in conjunction with the product?
>
> If so then I submit that SQL, PL/SQL, SQLJ, Java, C, C++, Cobol,
> Fortran, Perl, and
> a plethora of scripting languages (PHP, KSH, etc.) is as close as I need
> to be.

I tend to agree - this probably does't surprise you - but if there is a case for having stored procedures written in java in the db, then probably the ability to write stored procedures in C#,VB,C++,J# (probably the most likely order that they would be used) would appear to be an improvement on the Oracle offering.

>
> >enhanced select TOP ....
> >
> I'd need a more complete description to respond.

does Oracle offer select TOP .. at all? One of those easily worked around limitations that probably irritate a fair number of people trying to write db independent code - lets not go down the is this a good idea or not route.

> >seperate date and time datatypes?
> >
> Why? To what possible gain? Time bereft of date is almost always
> meaningless.

We have a report that we need to write on activity in working hours and out of working hours, we query on just the time part of the field. Again relatively easy but a nice to have feature

>
> >try..catch in PL/SQL?
> >
> Explain.

Create or replace longProcedure as
..
begin
try
query that might return no rows
catch NO_DATA_FOUND
....
end try

do some stuff
try
query that might throw a user defined exception but not normally NO_DATA_FOUND
catch UDE
...
end try

...
EXCEPTION
WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND
... I have really had an error here.

end ;
/

in other words if you expect certain errors in certain parts of code then deal with them there. Now personally i'd probably write that as Create or replace longProcedure as
begin
call subProc1
call subProc2
EXCEPTION
end;

etc

> >
> >
> Now I'm completely confused by what you are asking. Unfortunately that
> didn't stop me from responding as best I could. ;-)

My only point was that the OP stated that the article listed as new a whole bunch of features that Oracle had had 'for years' and yet when you got into specific features rather than marketing waffle a fair number of them seemed new both to mssql and to oracle. I have no problem arguing that oracle is a technically superior product - though I have issues with its pricing and marketing - but if we are going to do conparisons lets do them based on facts and not broad generalisations. One might as well look at the marketing for 10g and say 'ah but sqlserver has been easy to manage for years'.

-- 
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
Audit Commission Uk