This is missing my favorite oracle quirk: Empty strings are equivalent to null. Trying to insert an empty string into a NOT NULL column will fail, which took me a while to understand the first time I saw it happen.
Problems with Oracle SQL
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Re: Problems with Oracle SQL
#12The main gripe the author has is him overlooking how DBMS_OUTPUT works. He's better off either logging to a table, or using UTL_FILE.
Re: Problems with Oracle SQL
#13I have worked with the Oracle database for six years and haven't had any major issues with error messages, in fact I'd say Oracle did a really great job building an amazing database.
Re: Problems with Oracle SQL
#14It seems to be the general rule of thumb that, when you want to google for an oracle error message, then exclusion of both oracle documentation site, and developer forums is your first criteria on the search bar. Same applies to Microsoft (large parts of MSDN), and now Amazon Web Services documentation (at least some parts of it).
That's the reason StackOverflow works - it really solves programmer's problems, instead of the strange dialects of English and style that flourish on MS and Oracle and Java docs.
Re: Problems with Oracle SQL
#15This is missing my favorite oracle quirk: Empty strings are equivalent to null. Trying to insert an empty string into a NOT NULL column will fail, which took me a while to understand the first time I saw it happen.
One of oracle quirks for me is varchar2. What happened to varchar1? Nobody knows.
Re: Problems with Oracle SQL
#16I have worked with the Oracle database for six years and haven't had any major issues with error messages, in fact I'd say Oracle did a really great job building an amazing database.
I'm not a DBA, but as a developer who's worked with Oracle off and on for the last 15 years, I can say that the error messages are frequently misleading, and do, indeed, sometimes appear to be actively malicious. With other databases, they're at worst useless.
Re: Problems with Oracle SQL
#17I've worked with databases for a while now and I've never advocated for moving to Oracle (I have advocated for postgres though). The long term organizational costs is a big factor - but an almost equally large factor is the fact that 1. I have never actually used their dialect and have heard absolutely terrible things about it 2. There is no non-enterprise DBMS available that uses something close to their dialect so…
Oracle sells to executives, not technical staff.
Training on Oracle tech is via certified classes, provided “free” by your employer as part of their licensing deal; not online discovery.
Source: sold to and worked with Oracle Inc. for several years, got a front row seat at the sausage factory.
Re: Problems with Oracle SQL
#18[deleted]
Re: Problems with Oracle SQL
#19This is missing my favorite oracle quirk: Empty strings are equivalent to null. Trying to insert an empty string into a NOT NULL column will fail, which took me a while to understand the first time I saw it happen.
One of oracle quirks for me is varchar2. What happened to varchar1? Nobody knows.
TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIMEZONE. Never again.
Re: Problems with Oracle SQL
#20Well, I used to work with Oracle Databases and that "old man" (Donald Burleson) website has saved me quite a few times. I even remember the "Learn Oracle at the Sea" advertisement. But that's the state of affairs and I try to avoid them as much as I can. Amazon seems to think similar [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yBP5gnnZi4
To be really fair, have you ever seen SQL error messages that don't suck? I do agree that Oracle's are the worst by far though.
On Oracle most of the error messages are bad, not precise enough or plainly wrong. Basic things like a wrong error line (failure is on line 3, displays 5 or 6), messages that aren't related to the real issue. You're pretty much on your own.
Also, I had to switch to DBeaver since Oracle SQL Developer made things worse with random crashes and freezes. Back when I used it, an easy way to freeze the editor was connecting to a DB via VPN and then suddenly disconnect. The connection gets stuck, parts of the UI get frozen and after a while the whole thing freezes.
MySQL/MariaDB and Postgres are better.