Re: Brand New to Oracle

Gary,
  I started in dBase III/Clipper in about 12 years ago, moved to DB2 about 6 years back, and have been working with Oracle for about a year, but never used JDeveloper. Can answer some of your questions:

> What's the learning curve like to get a simple program that imports,
indexes and is able to retrieve the data from oh say 6 tables each with 10-30 columns?

If jDeveloper's wizards are anywhere near as good as those in 'regular' Developer, the curve should not be too steep, assuming your search criteria are not too convoluted.

> How is Oracle with variable lenght field information?

VARCHAR2 stores it efficiently

> How fast is Oracle with mid-string searches?

In versions prior to 8i, any search based on a function precludes the use of the index for that column (assuming there is one), this slows down the search if an index would have been available. Even 8i will be unable to use and index if you use the LIKE operator (as in WHERE ename LIKE '%SMITH%')
> Can Oracle index all the words in a field or must indexes start from
position 1 and move right?

Depends on the Oracle database, 8i allows indexes based on functions so you could index on SUBSTR(col_a,5,10) for example. Of course, this would still represent a fixed offset, can't think of a way to index 'all the words', but someone else might. Earlier versions up to and including Oracle8 cannot index on functions.

> Are Oracle string searches natively not case sensitive?

Unfortunately, they are case sensitive.

> lastely, I've picked up a couple books, Teach Yourself Oracle 8 in 21
Days > and Teach Yourself DB Programming with JDBC in 21 Days, any suggestions on other resources to get a good jumpstart on this project will be apperaciated.

I find the Oracle Press Book 'Oracle8 The Complete Reference' a very valuable reference. If they have a book on jDeveloper comparable to their 'Developer/2000 Handbook', it too might prove valuable.

One more note, Oracle's handling of DATE data is a little unusual, if your program will require the display and/or manipulation of dates, check out some of the threads on this and other forums regarding this subject.

Good luck with your project,
Paul

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Before you buy. Received on Sat Jan 22 2000 - 14:42:04 CET