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Problems with Oracle SQL

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Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#271

Post by robertlagrant »

zip1234 wrote: post #172
robertlagrant wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I sort of agree, but then the data structures get basically fixed forever, as lots of UI code is written directly against them. It's not the end of the world, but it does require data model maturity.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#272

Post by vjust »

torginus wrote: post #63
vjust wrote: post #14

It 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…

I'm not sure why the hate against MSDN - at least for .NET, I found the documentation to be one of the best in the business -even a decade ago. I'd only put Go's docs ahead in terms of helpfulness. I cut my teeth writing .NET code, then switched to Java writing apps on Android - the step down in doc quality was quite significant.

I might have been unfair on MSDN, as my experience in the past was really bad. I work with non-MS tech quite a bit, not sure if being deep in the MS-ecosystem helps in grokking the docs.. But I found it uniformly bad across : MS-SQL, Visual Basic, Asp.Net etc.

I think my issue might be more with the English style. But why does SO work right-away for me, while other these other developer portals don't. Part of the flaw maybe lies with me - maybe these portals (like MSDN) need in-depth, patient reading (guilty here). SO on the other hand, is way quicker in helping to solve issues. Over the years though, I've had enough bad experiences ..

Someone should do a compare between SO and non-SO. Take a sample, discrete (if such a thing exists in software issues) issue, and see how both help to solve. The layout of the page, the noise, and finally the curated/voted answer all contribute. And factor in the fact that SO answers are written by a diverse group of people, many of them non-English speaking.

Call it hate, but regardless, Oracle product docs - when you're in a bind are the bottom of the pit.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#273

Post by vjust »

habeebtc wrote: post #143
torginus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why the hate against MSDN - at least for .NET, I found the documentation to be one of the best in the business -even a decade ago. I'd only put Go's docs ahead in terms of helpfulness. I cut my teeth writing .NET code, then switched to Java writing apps on Android - the step down in doc quality was quite significant.

Win32 and .Net docs are great! Azure and Powershell docs leave a lot to be desired. A lot of the time parameters are vaguely documented, return values completely undocumented. You have to inspect the object returned by a lot of things to get to understand what members and methods it has, and what they mean. Examples illustrating what formats it expects inputs in? Forget it.

The docs have to be good. They are the creators, and their docs need-to and are comprehensive.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#274

Post by vjust »

krylon wrote: post #205
p1necone wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure powershell docs are the worst . All you get told is the name of fields, no indication of what they mean, or the expected inputs/outputs.

I assume you have not encountered SharePoint. The SharePoint documentation I could get my hands on - even in books I paid for - was so bad it was like I was living inside some David Lynch interpretation of Ancient Greek myths of divine punishments unleashed upon the worst sinners. More than once, the "solution" to my problem was a blog post by a SharePoint consultant from India describing some undocumented flag to pa…

This. Sharepoint has to be a beast to work with.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#275

Post by tracker1 »

tracker1 wrote: post #133
cygned wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MSSQL T-SQL is just so a weirdly ugly language and the feature set of SQL Server is super weird. If we can, we go with Postgres or MySQL.

There are definitely aspects of MSSQL I don't like... for the most part I don't mind it. I will say, if you're willing to pay the cost, getting advanced features setup and running in MSSQL is easier than any other RDBMS I've ever tried. That said, still inclined to use PostgreSQL. I do not like MySQL at all, and every single time I've used it, I feel cringes of absolute pain... starting with "utf8" isn't UTF8, "utf8m…

isn't case-sensitive/binary... that one got me when migrating data and had converted from older identifiers to a UUID map.

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#276

Post by robertlagrant »

munk-a wrote: post #174
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!

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)

ZZZ? EEK!

Re: Problems with Oracle SQL

#277

Post by tracker1 »

tracker1 wrote: post #135
smartmic wrote: post #95

A completely prejudiced and highly reduced view on SQL implementations, but one that could reflect the general mood: in the camp of the good: PostgreSQL, SQLite; in that of the bad: Oracle SQL, MSSQL. Somewhere in between with a tendency to good: MariaDB

I'm not sure I'd include SQLite as particularly good... Same goes for mySQL/MariaDB, too many oddities. I do like PostgreSQL. MSSQL neutral to positive (nice to administer/setup).

For clarification, I really do like SQLite, it's probably the best option for what it is... I just don't consider it particularly good. I also like FirebirdSQL quite a lot, but it's more difficult in general to work with (embedded licensing, etc).
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