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Problems with Oracle SQL

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Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#221

Post by chasil »

irrational wrote: post #131
munk-a wrote: post #8

I'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…

The problem is the Oracle dialect was created BEFORE the SQL standard was written. For backwards compatibility they never changed it after the SQL standard was written. Personally, I think they should have had a flag so you could choose whether to use standard SQL or Oracle SQL.

It would be ever so nice if Microsoft SQL Server supported JOIN USING in addition to JOIN ON.

Everybody has problems.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#222

Post by jiggawatts »

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.

> Sometimes I write the same script as PS and as bash script.

That's your mistake! Don't write bash scripts in PowerShell, and don't write PowerShell scripts in bash. Don't be surprised if the shopkeeper can't understand you, when you're speaking "French" by translating an English sentence word for word.

PowerShell is much more readable, terse, and elegant than Bash. It absolutely blows it out of the water... on Windows, where its inputs are the streams of objects that it's designed for. If you're trying to shoehorn text-based streams like in Linux into a PowerShell script, you're going to have a bad time.

See this earlier comment I made and the linked comments for some examples of PowerShell-vs-Bash: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23423650

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#223

Post by chasil »

metadata wrote: post #45
munk-a wrote: post #8

I'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…

Postgres has Oracle layer, available as a commercial variant by EnterpriseDB. I don't think MariaDB implementation can compete, but EDB Postgres is solid. Basically a native implementation of Oracle in Postgres.

The Oracle layer was also added to IBM DB2.

Which one? Good question. The mainframe, as/400, and Windows versions are all on separate source code last I heard.

https://www.enterprisedb.com/news/enterprisedb-and-ibmr-coll...

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#224

Post by orthoxerox »

tracker1 wrote: post #129
forinti wrote: post #34

Oracle SQL and PL/SQL is the better side of Oracle. Having to install and maintain Oracle software is the real hell. You sometimes need a patch for the installer (I kid you not, the OAM 12.2.1.4 installer needs a patch to work on Oracle Linux). The syntax for Advanced Rules in OAM is not completely described in the manual, the examples are wrong, and you have to disable the parser in version 12.2.1.4 because it is do…

I hate that you have to install the Oracle Client, which is its' own byzantine exercise in frustration to use an application that talks to Oracle. Most other databases, the application includes a library that communicates to the DB via a protocol implementation... Oracle doesn't want this kind of use case.

There are rather usable clients for Java and .Net that do not require that. Well, the .Net one silently converts async calls to sync, but Oracle wouldn't be Oracle without nasty surprises.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#225

Post by jiggawatts »

simonw wrote: post #118

There was a comment on here a few years ago from a developer with experience working on the Oracle database codebase which put me off it for life: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941

To me, millions test sounded like a good thing. The main issue I had with the description of that workflow is that if the tests take 20-30 hours to run, someone in Oracle is not spending sufficient money on build hardware! They should have tens of thousands of servers, not hundreds, and they should be kitted out with the fastest processors and NVMe drives money can buy.

If you look at how companies like NVIDIA do things, they throw ungodly amounts of compute at development and simulations. Entire data centres worth!

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#226

Post by jhgb »

tracker1 wrote: post #127
robertlagrant wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Use vertical tab, or another whitespace or field separator character, like EOF etc. Generally something a modern keyboard won't be entering, and won't generally be transmitted over the wire.

Or just prefix everything so that your string domain doesn't shrink? Then you don't have to worry what your users enter.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#227

Post by chasil »

forinti wrote: post #34

Oracle SQL and PL/SQL is the better side of Oracle. Having to install and maintain Oracle software is the real hell. You sometimes need a patch for the installer (I kid you not, the OAM 12.2.1.4 installer needs a patch to work on Oracle Linux). The syntax for Advanced Rules in OAM is not completely described in the manual, the examples are wrong, and you have to disable the parser in version 12.2.1.4 because it is do…

The Oracle 19.3 installer must be used to install on RedHat/Oracle Linux 8, but nothing lower that 19.6 will run on this OS.

Two patch sets must be applied to the nonfunctional installer before it will work, which was quite hostile to learn and master.

At least with 11.2, a new install set was issued for RedHat 7.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#228

Post by chasil »

godshatter wrote: post #157

I've been working with Oracle SQL for years, and it definitely has it's idiosyncrasies. Part of their problem is (in my opinion) an unwillingness to upgrade older programs and processes. I do a lot of work in Pro*C, which is C with pre-compiled Oracle SQL and PL/SQL embedded in normal C code. The SQL you can use in that tool, for some reason, is a small subset of what you can use in an SQL tool like PL/SQL Developer.…

The up arrow works in sqlplus on Windows.

A java remake called SQLcmd fixes some of the other problems.

Forms? Didn't that go out of support?

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#229

Post by chasil »

treypitt wrote: post #53

Anecdotal, but wanted to mention positive experience with Oracle support. I have posted questions on SO relating to Oracle SQL and SqlDeveloper, and Oracle staff responded quickly with a solution I accepted. Shoutout to ThatJeffSmith for contributing to the community!

Oracle support is always good when escalated.

Without escalation, sometimes tickets bounce between groups.

I filed a ticket on getting sqlplus to work in a chroot, and finally figured it out myself with strace. I didn't think it warranted escalation.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#230

Post by [deleted] »

revscat wrote: post #117
laumars wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more than that. Oracle is sold off the back of its middleware applications. Which equally suck too…but at least they’re solving difficult problems that most other database vendors don’t both with.

Such as?

[deleted]
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