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Problems with Oracle SQL

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Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#171

Post by zip1234 »

pas wrote: post #132
tartoran wrote: post #67

Beside the regular complaints or praises I find oracle extremely ugly, unaesthetic and inconsistent. I understand it is old and has backwards compatibility but why would anyone choose oracle over a newer modern RBDMS such as PostgreSQL or MSSQL for a new project? Besides, Oracle is very expensive and very hard to get rid of. It is also a bit of an issue that they don't have a default IDE, I worked with Rapid SQL whic…

There's Oracle SQL Developer :D but as others mentioned, it's sold to executives, not to technical personnel.

I actually like SQL Developer, though I haven't used it in quite awhile. Remember it making my life a lot easier though!

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#172

Post by zip1234 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #116
JaggerFoo wrote: post #58

Oracle SQL is not the devil. I can code up SQL easily and find errors. I use sqldeveloper and granted It's not as helpful as say coding Dart on Android Studio IDE in pinpointing where a problem is and making suggestions. But I've been able maintain single sql statements 800 lines long, perform knapsack in a single sql statement, and develop complex packages in Oracle. If you really want to see super complexity, downl…

APEX just exists to lock people even further into the database. A literal antipattern of a product.

That is completely true, but the product is actually very cool. I wish there was a database agnostic version of the product as it is such a great concept for many business apps.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#173

Post by capitainenemo »

I have a special level of hate for oracle full text searches as well, which requires embedding an additional complex search syntax into a text string, so you can't use binds in any reliable way without sanitisation.

There is no interface that I can see that takes a temp table or set of parameters.

I've also grown to dislike their (+) syntax. Super convenient but mixing the left joins into the WHERE clauses makes them get lost pretty easily.

I've also spent a ton of time with mystery crashes in large queries in PHP and Java where the crash only seemed to occur if the prepared statements had \r\n instead of \n, or went away on clearing statement cache until next time a set of statements were loaded.

Oh, and the annoying VARCHAR limits - thankfully higher than the 4000 it was at for a long time, but still irritating even now. Trivial example: select listagg(level,',') from dual connect by level <= 8000

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#174

Post by munk-a »

robertlagrant wrote: post #96
zzzeek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its... .... sorry not possible (can't store empty string in a NULL col either) for reals

Just store the string "empty" and hope there are no nihilists who've changed their names to match. Simple!

Real programmers encode emptiness as ZZZ...

(I once worked maintaining a MUD that used internal memory management and marked block terminals (which were unnecessary since it stored the length of blocks it had allocated) with ZZZ)

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#175

Post by piyh »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #146
ericbarrett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Oracle sells to executives, not technical staff. agree. i have a year or two with Oracle Apex. at a pervious job, we were using Java to develop a web app but a executive saw how fast you can create a web page/app with Oracle Apex. we switch over since we already using Oracle for database. Enterprise software is not targeting you (techies). its for CxOs.

We kludged together an apex reporting solution to replace an old payroll UI. It was quick to work with in relation to the number of reports we were able to publish.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#176

Post by zaphar »

andix wrote: post #155
omnicognate wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not as good as they were. The win32 docs are a a thing of beauty. I used to actively enjoy writing win32 code, in stark contrast to my experiences with Core Audio which is a similar sort of C API but documented by Apple, which is to say not at all. It is hell on earth. Powershell, though. I don't know how you could even document powershell. It's insane.

I learned a lot of different programming languages. But I’ve never seen something as cryptic as power shell. Sometimes I write the same script as PS and as bash script. For PS I usually need 3x more characters than for bash. There are some features though that are really useful. But most of the time you won’t know about them when you need them.

Character count is not generally a good measure of the quality here. I think the biggest issues aren't the verbosity but how complex it can be to express some of the most common operations.

Filter is harder than it should be[0]. Same thing for map

[0]: https://www.concurrency.com/blog/august-2018/powershell-basi...

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#177

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #76
vbezhenar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day MS SQL was Windows-only and Postgres was not mature, so the choice was Oracle or DB2. And Oracle was more popular, because it used more progressive model (versions vs DB2 locks). Plenty of people who don't closely follow recent trends associate database with Oracle, so when they have a word, they'll choose it. Oracle it not that bad anyway, it's just stupidly expensive. I'd choose Postgres any day, bu…

> Oracle it not that bad anyway, it's just stupidly expensive. Full of bugs, some that destroy speed, some that destroy data, some that just make a feature that you need unusable. More heavyweight than lead (although it gets fast after you throw enough hardware). Lacking any capable or usable management interface (but then, that excludes everyone except for postgres and mysql). Impossible to program. Impossible to pr…

> comes with the Oracle legal team

This would've been sufficient, honestly.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#178

Post by approxim8ion »

So I've used MySQL at a very basic level but for the last couple of years almost solely been on Oracle because that's what my org uses. I sporadically dabble in the db stuff but am mostly working on front end. What's the db most people use now, Postgres? Could someone point me towards a good resource for it?

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#179

Post by JoeOfTexas »

approxim8ion wrote: post #178

So I've used MySQL at a very basic level but for the last couple of years almost solely been on Oracle because that's what my org uses. I sporadically dabble in the db stuff but am mostly working on front end. What's the db most people use now, Postgres? Could someone point me towards a good resource for it?

PostGres is fine I guess, but MySQL setup is streamlined better. If MySQL is fine for big corps its fine for me too.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#180

Post by pantulis »

msluyter wrote: post #75
thornygreb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My goto was Tom Kyte ( https://asktom.oracle.com ) for learning the 'why'. Burleson is an interesting character, but not always correct either.

Tom Kyte books were great and beyond Oracle, I learned a lot about databases generally from them.

My SO was a Oracle DBA and she swore by Kyte's books.
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