Another angle on this....

Your points are valid, I don't contest them. However as someone coming from SQL Server to Oracle I have faced the following significant (to me) irritations:

1. Empty strings turned into nulls. Empty strings per se are not supported
2. Quoted identifiers are case sensitive, just what you need...
3. No support for identity columns, instead requiring programmers to create sequences and triggers to achieve effects that are trivial in other databases
4. No option to ignore case on indexes or character-string comparison
5. No support for comparison operators in arithmetic expressions
6. No support for "Case" notation
7. Bugs in the ODBC driver which (in my case) make CLOBS unusable, so I have to rely on varchar2(4000)
8. Out-of-the-box retrieval of multi-record datasets at 1/40 the speed of SQL Server in my (highly optimised) ODBC usage (SQLBindCol, multi-record Chunked retrievals, etc)

I know that there are work-arounds for some of these "features". And I understand that Oracle is a great tool for those wanting to store vast quantities of data. A competitor to SQL Server for those just wanting to store a few million records and have a thousands of transactions per day, with less than 50 permanent users, it ain't, IMHO.

Ducks back into large concrete bunker and dons flameproof suit <G>

Regards Received on Mon Feb 18 2002 - 09:30:38 CST