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Oracle Closed World

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joel garry

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Jun 21, 2012, 2:39:06 PM6/21/12
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Everyone should know by now Larry bought a Lanai:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/20/us/hawaii-ellison-island/index.html

Best comment I've seen: "let's be honest, if he rocks a jetpack to
work, he's probably better than most of us ;-) "

2nd: "Do you really want to start an Oracle vs SQL Server debate on a
CNN forum"

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/20/oracle_sun_revenues/

John Hurley

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Jun 21, 2012, 8:57:35 PM6/21/12
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Joel:

# Everyone should know by now Larry bought a Lanai

Not sure if this is a small island or a big one but at least he has
somewhere to dock his yachts now ...

Mladen Gogala

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Jun 22, 2012, 8:37:32 AM6/22/12
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On Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:39:06 -0700, joel garry wrote:


> 2nd: "Do you really want to start an Oracle vs SQL Server debate on a
> CNN forum"

There is no such debate any more. People are buying SQL Server just
because of the exorbitant Oracle prices. The only database that can go
head to head with Oracle is DB2.



--
http://mgogala.byethost5.com

Mladen Gogala

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Jun 22, 2012, 8:39:18 AM6/22/12
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On Thu, 21 Jun 2012 17:57:35 -0700, John Hurley wrote:

> Not sure if this is a small island or a big one but at least he has
> somewhere to dock his yachts now ...

600 square miles is not that small. It's almost the size of Singapore.
Larry can now declare his own state, Oracle*State.



--
http://mgogala.byethost5.com

Mark D Powell

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Jun 22, 2012, 10:30:18 AM6/22/12
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When it comes to Oracle vs SQL Server vs DB2 I have to admit that MS SQL Server 2008 is pretty good and 2012 is probably even better. MS is adding the internal views and tracing that Oracle provides and you can get some pretty decent Intel based hardware these days so the gap has definitely narrowed in what you can successfully accomplish with the databases.

I like and understand Oracle better, but which database is better depends more on which database your developers know how to use intelligently rather than on the capabilities of the database itself. No matter how technically advanced the rdbms is, bad design can bring it to its knees and make it look bad.

IMHO -- Mark D Powell --



Mladen Gogala

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Jun 22, 2012, 2:41:09 PM6/22/12
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On Fri, 22 Jun 2012 07:30:18 -0700, Mark D Powell wrote:

> When it comes to Oracle vs SQL Server vs DB2 I have to admit that MS SQL
> Server 2008 is pretty good and 2012 is probably even better. MS is
> adding the internal views and tracing that Oracle provides and you can
> get some pretty decent Intel based hardware these days so the gap has
> definitely narrowed in what you can successfully accomplish with the
> databases.
>
> I like and understand Oracle better, but which database is better
> depends more on which database your developers know how to use
> intelligently rather than on the capabilities of the database itself.
> No matter how technically advanced the rdbms is, bad design can bring it
> to its knees and make it look bad.
>
> IMHO -- Mark D Powell --

My very brief encounter with SQL Server happened in the year 2002, so it
might not reflect the current state of SQL Server technology. Do you have
a book that you would recommend to an old oraclite to learn SQL Server?
This seems to be a very sought after skill, even in the world of Oracle DBA
people. I have worked with MySQL 5.1, 5.2 and 5.5, PostgreSQL 8.3, 8.4,
9.0 and 9.1 and Oracle, from the version 4.1 until the version 11.2.0.3.
SQL Server probably shouldn't be that hard.




--
http://mgogala.freehostia.com

joel garry

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Jun 22, 2012, 7:28:58 PM6/22/12
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zigz...@yahoo.com

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Jun 23, 2012, 1:07:52 AM6/23/12
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I forced myself to learn SQL Server last year by getting a SQL Server 2008 DBA Certification (Microsoft Certified Technology Professional). I found book by Tim Carpenter to be pretty good plus lots of blogs on SQL Server 2008 on internet. While SQL Server 2008 and now 2012 are very close to Oracle in terms of DBA features (except it does not have RAC ); I found SQL Server t-sql to be far behind Oracle's PL-SQL.
T-SQL even does not have a for loop, it only has while loop. There is no if then elseif only if then else. It does not have any record type.. t-sql is very primitive. While t-sql has a debugger within SSMS, one needs sysadmin (DBA) privileges, god knows why?, which makes it very difficult to debug t-sql program in my company’s environment where data center does not give sysadmin proivileges .
I guess Microsoft SQL Server team does not want people to use t-sql all that much, instead use .NET programming languages, It does provide CLR based stored procedures, I am trying to figure out how to use them in my work...

Noons

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Jun 23, 2012, 6:29:34 AM6/23/12
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Mladen Gogala wrote,on my timestamp of 22/06/2012 10:39 PM:


> 600 square miles is not that small. It's almost the size of Singapore.
> Larry can now declare his own state, Oracle*State.

Let's hope a little more "unbreakable" than before...

Noons

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Jun 23, 2012, 6:42:16 AM6/23/12
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Mark D Powell wrote,on my timestamp of 23/06/2012 12:30 AM:

> When it comes to Oracle vs SQL Server vs DB2 I have to
> admit that MS SQL Server 2008 is pretty good and 2012
> is probably even better.

I'd skip the probably and go for definitely.
From what I've seen so far, it's as good as anything.

> MS is adding the internal views and tracing that Oracle provides
> and you can get some pretty decent Intel based hardware these
> days so the gap has definitely narrowed in what you can
> successfully accomplish with the databases.

Definitely. I started to see the writing in the wall with MSSQL 2005. That was
the first leapfrog from MS. And SQLStudio is such a much better admin tool than
EM it defies any possible comparison.

It's been non-stop improvements from MS since then. There is a company that
L-I-S-T-E-N-S. Intead of blaming others for its faults.

Oracle wasted the last 7 years in adding to con-fusion and trying to make java
survive while blaming everything else wrong on the "expensive" dbas.
I'm sure at one stage "climate change" was also blamed on us.
As if their software was ever cheap and/or easy to use...


> I like and understand Oracle better, but which database is better
> depends more on which database your developers know how to
> use intelligently rather than on the capabilities of the database itself.

Same here. Entirely agreed.

> No matter how technically advanced the rdbms is, bad design can
> bring it to its knees and make it look bad.

In a nutshell: bingo!

Noons

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Jun 23, 2012, 6:54:16 AM6/23/12
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Mladen Gogala wrote,on my timestamp of 23/06/2012 4:41 AM:

> My very brief encounter with SQL Server happened in the year 2002, so it
> might not reflect the current state of SQL Server technology. Do you have
> a book that you would recommend to an old oraclite to learn SQL Server?
> This seems to be a very sought after skill, even in the world of Oracle DBA
> people. I have worked with MySQL 5.1, 5.2 and 5.5, PostgreSQL 8.3, 8.4,
> 9.0 and 9.1 and Oracle, from the version 4.1 until the version 11.2.0.3.
> SQL Server probably shouldn't be that hard.


Some good stuff here:
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/learning-center/sql-server-library.aspx

This is definitely worth a read and it's free:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/F/6/FF62CAE0-CE38-4228-9025-FBF729312698/Microsoft_Press_eBook_Introducing_Microsoft_SQL_Server_2012_PDF.pdf

There is a L-O-T more from the devil themselves.
Oh: and no one will try to outsource you when working as a dba for MSSQL, as
opposed to what Oracle routinely does.

Mladen Gogala

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Jun 23, 2012, 12:30:54 PM6/23/12
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On Sat, 23 Jun 2012 20:42:16 +1000, Noons wrote:

> Definitely. I started to see the writing in the wall with MSSQL 2005.
> That was the first leapfrog from MS. And SQLStudio is such a much
> better admin tool than EM it defies any possible comparison.
>
> It's been non-stop improvements from MS since then. There is a company
> that L-I-S-T-E-N-S. Intead of blaming others for its faults.
>
> Oracle wasted the last 7 years in adding to con-fusion and trying to
> make java survive while blaming everything else wrong on the "expensive"
> dbas.
> I'm sure at one stage "climate change" was also blamed on us.
> As if their software was ever cheap and/or easy to use...

I must say, after all these years of working with Oracle, that I agree
with you. I met so many people at Oracle that seemed to be open and have
the sense of the user community, but it has all vanished into thin air. I
remember Goff Squire, Chris Ellis, Richard Barker, Anjo Kolk and many
others. I am aware that those names do not mean much to many of you, but
they used to.
Oracle Corp. turned into very monster it purported to fight against
(Microsoft, IBM). At the same time, with the curious twist of fate, those
two companies evolved into much more user friendly entities than Oracle.



--
http://mgogala.byethost5.com

zigz...@yahoo.com

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Jun 24, 2012, 8:30:25 AM6/24/12
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On Thursday, June 21, 2012 2:39:06 PM UTC-4, joel garry wrote:
One very nice thing about SQL Server I found is that you can set "archive log mode" (recovery model) at each database level instead of instance level. Same way, you can do database backup (physical)/recovery at each database level. These features are very useful in my data center where they always want to put many databases in one instance, and I can turn archived logging off just for my database when doing bulk loads..

Robert Klemme

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Jun 24, 2012, 1:04:11 PM6/24/12
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On 23.06.2012 07:07, zigz...@yahoo.com wrote:
> I found SQL Server t-sql to be far behind Oracle's
> PL-SQL. T-SQL even does not have a for loop, it only has while loop.
> There is no if then elseif only if then else. It does not have any
> record type.. t-sql is very primitive.

It's not the worst thing to motivate developers to move from procedural
code to SQL... :-) Procedural is often used because it is easier to
understand for humans. But unfortunately you can bring any database's
performance down with the wrong set of procedures and triggers.

Cheers

robert

--
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/


Gerard H. Pille

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Jun 24, 2012, 1:41:18 PM6/24/12
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Robert Klemme wrote:
>
> It's not the worst thing to motivate developers to move from procedural code to SQL... :-)
> Procedural is often used because it is easier to understand for humans. But unfortunately you
> can bring any database's performance down with the wrong set of procedures and triggers.
>

Not with SQL?

Robert Klemme

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Jun 24, 2012, 2:28:10 PM6/24/12
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No, never!! ;-)

My badly worded point was that a procedural solution often cannot be
optimized the same way a single query can - for example because the
query then is spread across a number of different queries. Or data is
aggregated in a temp table and then processed further which creates more
IO etc.

Gerard H. Pille

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Jun 24, 2012, 3:14:22 PM6/24/12
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Robert Klemme wrote:
> On 24.06.2012 19:41, Gerard H. Pille wrote:
>> Robert Klemme wrote:
>>>
>>> It's not the worst thing to motivate developers to move from
>>> procedural code to SQL... :-)
>>> Procedural is often used because it is easier to understand for
>>> humans. But unfortunately you
>>> can bring any database's performance down with the wrong set of
>>> procedures and triggers.
>>
>> Not with SQL?
>
> No, never!! ;-)
>
> My badly worded point was that a procedural solution often cannot be optimized the same way a
> single query can - for example because the query then is spread across a number of different
> queries. Or data is aggregated in a temp table and then processed further which creates more IO
> etc.
>

I know, Robert, I know, just kidding. I know people who'd call two functions to retrieve two
columns from the same record.

Robert Klemme

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Jun 24, 2012, 5:35:32 PM6/24/12
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On 24.06.2012 21:14, Gerard H. Pille wrote:

> I know, Robert, I know, just kidding. I know people who'd call two
> functions to retrieve two columns from the same record.

That's the very thing I had in mind. :-)

TheBoss

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Jun 24, 2012, 6:37:03 PM6/24/12
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"Gerard H. Pille" <g...@skynet.be> wrote in
news:4fe766ee$0$3104$ba62...@news.skynet.be:
I wonder what dbms they use.
As relational ones do have columns but no records (they have rows), and
hierarchical (like IMS) do have records but no columns (they have fields),
they probably use a hybrid, hierarcho-relational dbms, with HSQL (or DL/2?)
as the language to manage the data stored in segment tables...

--
Jeroen

zigz...@yahoo.com

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Jun 24, 2012, 7:16:46 PM6/24/12
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On Thursday, June 21, 2012 2:39:06 PM UTC-4, joel garry wrote:
I have seen way too many times because sql is relativelky easy to learn, people write all kinds of queries to bring databse to its knees. There is no concept of any resuable modular code ...Also, complex sql satements are very difficult to debug,I don' know there are any debuggers where you can step through each step of the query plan which your database engine is running.

I may be biased but procedural language is alwyas needed to do complex database procedssing, that's why Oracle has PL/sQL and SQL Server t-sql. It is just that t-sql is primitive compared to pl/sql.

Noons

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Jun 27, 2012, 3:04:51 AM6/27/12
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Mladen Gogala wrote,on my timestamp of 24/06/2012 2:30 AM:

>
> I must say, after all these years of working with Oracle, that I agree
> with you. I met so many people at Oracle that seemed to be open and have
> the sense of the user community, but it has all vanished into thin air. I
> remember Goff Squire, Chris Ellis, Richard Barker, Anjo Kolk and many
> others. I am aware that those names do not mean much to many of you, but
> they used to.
> Oracle Corp. turned into very monster it purported to fight against
> (Microsoft, IBM). At the same time, with the curious twist of fate, those
> two companies evolved into much more user friendly entities than Oracle.


Indeed and most unfortunately.

I must single out some of the local marketing folks from Oracle who have of late
changed radically their positions re dbas. (about effing time!)
At least, my management is not getting "partner" proposals to outsource me every
second month - now they only show up once a year...
I can live with that: it's part and parcel of normal advertising practices.

But it's too little, too late. The wanton disparaging of that career inj the
last 10 years by Oracle, in their attempts at teflon-ing away their incredibly
high licence and maintenance fees, is gonna bite them back, hard and long.

They were warned - many times, by myself and many others - that they were
chasing wild geese with that strategy and essentially killing their own
credibility. It happened first in NSW, now other states in Australia are
falling in line in their changed attitudes to their product line.

Instead of a captive audience in all dbas, they now have a job category that is
in general openly hostile to anything to do with them.

I do help run an Oracle SIG in Sydney which battles long and hard to generate
any interest on new dba technologies and their use, as well as basic day-to-day
dba stuff. Not once did we get one iota of support from Oracle. Not ONCE!

Their own "user's group" despite copious Oracle support, struggles to produce
thrice a year one tenth of the attendance levels we realize on just about every
single of our meetings. Not once has Oracle acknowledged or helped us in any
way, shape or format. Quite the opposite in fact - I do well remember the
disparaging and deprecating comments by some of the self-appointed local
"experts" when the whole thing started a few years ago.

I shouldn't have bothered, but I do take exception when dbas are regularly
disparaged and pointed out at as the "cause of all ills" in Oracle's own
presentations and seminars. That is just completely unprofessional!

Matthias Hoys

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Jun 27, 2012, 3:35:31 AM6/27/12
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On Saturday, June 23, 2012 7:07:52 AM UTC+2, (unknown) wrote:
>
> I forced myself to learn SQL Server last year by getting a SQL Server 2008 DBA Certification (Microsoft Certified Technology Professional). I found book by Tim Carpenter to be pretty good plus lots of blogs on SQL Server 2008 on internet. While SQL Server 2008 and now 2012 are very close to Oracle in terms of DBA features (except it does not have RAC ); I found SQL Server t-sql to be far behind Oracle's PL-SQL.
> T-SQL even does not have a for loop, it only has while loop. There is no if then elseif only if then else. It does not have any record type.. t-sql is very primitive. While t-sql has a debugger within SSMS, one needs sysadmin (DBA) privileges, god knows why?, which makes it very difficult to debug t-sql program in my company’s environment where data center does not give sysadmin proivileges .
> I guess Microsoft SQL Server team does not want people to use t-sql all that much, instead use .NET programming languages, It does provide CLR based stored procedures, I am trying to figure out how to use them in my work...

I used to work with SQL Server 2000. One of the biggest Belgian banks at that time used it as back end for their corporate website. One of the problems with SQL Server then was that it was not always easy to track down performance problems. You had the MS performance counters and the SQL Profiler and that was about it. No extended wait interface and dynamic views like Oracle has. I don't know if that has improved with the recent version of SQL Server?

Matthias Hoys

Mladen Gogala

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Jun 27, 2012, 8:12:14 AM6/27/12
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On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:35:31 -0700, Matthias Hoys wrote:

> I used to work with SQL Server 2000.

Yup, that's the version I encountered as well. It's 2012 for another 6
months.



--
http://mgogala.byethost5.com

zigz...@yahoo.com

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Jun 27, 2012, 6:17:04 PM6/27/12
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SQL Server 2008 has something called Performance Studio which is similar to Oracle's AWR. SQL Server is trying to provide everything which Oracle has, only thing they do not have is RAC, EXADATA and the fact that SQL SERVER only runs on Windows Servers even though it can be accessed from database e programs on UNIX, LINUX etc. Anyway, Microsoft wants to see Windows Server as well so it is unlikely they will provide SQL Server on anything other than Windows Server. Windows Servers such as Windows 2008 are very powerful. Only drawback I see installation of security patches every month..

TheBoss

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Jun 27, 2012, 7:17:03 PM6/27/12
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zigz...@yahoo.com wrote in
news:296c7b95-ac6a-4876...@googlegroups.com:
> which Oracle has, only thing they do not have is RAC, <...>

Actually they do have RAC:
http://www.rac4sql.net/

Just kiddng...
But serious: RAC isn't a 'feature' in itself, it's Oracle's attempt to
implement a 'feature' (if scaleability can be called that way), and not
everyone is convinced it is as useful as Oracle wants us to believe it is.

--
Jeroen
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