Re: Crossing over from SQL Server

Tracy McKibben wrote:
> About a year ago, the company that I work for purchased another
> company. We're a large SQL Server shop, but this new company has a
> mix of SQL Server and Oracle. As part of the DBA team, I'm required
> to start learning Oracle, in order to provide production support
> (admin duties, performance tuning, etc..).
>
> Aside from classroom training (doesn't work well for me, I get bored),
> what suggestions are there for getting up to speed? I'm looking for a
> "in SQL, you do it like this, in Oracle, you do it this way" stuff -
> books, CBT's, whatever. I'm planning to purchase the "Admin Workshop
> I", "Admin Workshop II", and "Performance Tuning" CBT's from Oracle.
> What else can I look for?

I teach Oracle cross-over courses for SQL Server, Sybase, Informix, and DB2 as part of my curriculum at the University of Washington and my finding is that those SQL Server pros that do not approach Oracle with an open mind to learning new things do the worst.

Lets start with verbiage. The following words, in Oracle, have meanings partially or totally unrelated to their usage in SQL Server: DATABASE
INSTANCE
CLUSTER
LOG FILE Oracle has object types that are critically important that do not exist in SQL Server including:
SEQUENCES
BEFORE TRIGGERS
(most) EVENT TRIGGERS
PACKAGES
OPERATORS
BITMAP INDEXES
BITMAP JOIN INDEXES
FUNCTION BASED INDEXES
REVERSE KEY INDEXES
INVISIBLE INDEXES
EXTERNAL TABLES
GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLES
(most) PARTITIONING & (all) COMPOSITE PARTITIONING

And the underlying concepts and architecture of SQL Server is based on the INGRES project at UC Berkeley and bears no relationship to the concepts brought to Oracle. SQL Server 2005 tried to imitate one (MVCC) but otherwise they are essentially different beasts.

I have put together a page that hopefully makes more of this clear: http://www.psoug.org/reference/sqlserver.html

And the other big thing ... in Oracle you MUST read the docs. Start here: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db111/homepage and find the link to "Concepts."

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
Oracle Ace Director & Instructor
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org