Re: Code in the database or middle tier (the CLR controversy)

[Quoted] Serge Rielau wrote:

> Not his point. The point is that the prorietary synatx also has
> proprietary semantics. So why teach what Oracle discourages?

Normally I encourage that students, and professionals, follow Oracle's advice. For example when Oracle said stop using LONG and LONG RAW I dropped every example that used them.

But there is a significant difference with the ISO syntax and here is why.

1. 99% of all code in Oracle anyone sees will be ISO compliant and the Oracle professional must understand it and be able to maintain it.
2. In the Oracle community those that code with ANSI are generally viewed as newbies who have recently come over from some other product. Use ANSI in an interview and likely you won't get the job if the other person that applied is your technical equal but uses the syntax that looks more "normal" to the interview team.

And while I expect you won't like #2, your liking it is not relevant to the fact that I have seen this played out in multiple interviews.

There are things the Oracle supported ANSI syntax will do, such as full outer joins that are far more complex to do with ISO. And there are things the ANSI syntax allows that are just plain moronic ... such as natural joins. I encourage all of my students to learn all of it and then use the appropriate tool for the environment in which they are working.

> Interesting to note that Oracle bothered. Apparantly they saw a need for
> compliance for core function...
> http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14117_01/server.101/b10759/queries006.htm

They seem to always embrace that which is common. But also to extend where they see a 'need' (you may read that as 'market opportunity'). The critical factor is that I can accomplish the goal in the manner that is most pleasing to me as a developer. The amount of ANSI code I have seen in Oracle applications is a very small percentage: Not more than a few percent. That may change over decades but it isn't changing any time soon.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)