migrating to oracle

I just wanted some input from people who have worked primarily in Informix, but also at least dabbled w/ Oracle. I'm not worried about technicalites of importing Informix data into an Orcale databsae...I'm more interested in anything of signifigance in working w/ Oracle. From my preliminary impressions w/ NetG training CDs (which are a waste of money IMnsHO) and reading an O'Reilly PL/SQL book - at about 1/10 the cost of NetG's crappy CDs, it is probably 10 times more informative. Anyway, SQL is SQL isn't it? I imagine DBA work will be more different than basic app development, but app development will be different enough.... What's your experience?

dan wright wrote: > > I just wanted some input from people who have worked primarily in > Informix, but also at least dabbled w/ Oracle. > > I'm not worried about technicalites of importing Informix data into an > Orcale databsae...I'm more interested in anything of signifigance in > working w/ Oracle. From my preliminary impressions w/ NetG training CDs > (which are a waste of money IMnsHO) and reading an O'Reilly PL/SQL book > - at about 1/10 the cost of NetG's crappy CDs, it is probably 10 times > more informative. > > Anyway, SQL is SQL isn't it? I imagine DBA work will be more different > than basic app development, but app development will be different > enough.... > > What's your experience? Just a few surprises for Informixers going to Orable: In Oracle land, mainly because Oracle did not have good form and reporting tools like ACE, PERFORM, and 4GL early on, PL/SQL has evolved into a near programming language and so Oraclers tend to do EVERYTHING in pl/sql and stored procedures that here in Informixland we do using shell scripts, ACE, PERFORM, 4GL, etc. Oracle's implementation of outer joins is non-standard and there are SQL extensions to handle recursive relationships which while rather nice is also non-standard. FWIW. Art S. Kagel

Also: The concept itself of DATABASE is strongly different CREATE PRIVATE SYNONYM is not portable, all synonyms ad public SCROLL cursors are unknown to Oracle Temporary tables as in CREATE TEMP TABLE are unknow to Oracle: you may use what thet call SNAPSHOTS to emulate some but not all cases you currently use in Informix DATE SQL type is not portable Of course, system tables like systables, syscolumns and so on, are not portable BEGIN WORK is not portable this is as far as I remember about a port I did two years ago, but the list should be longer... Peter -- -------------------------------------------------------- Peter Komanns E-Mail: p.komanns@sindata.it hiroshima 45; chernobyl 86; windows 95, 98, 2000 !!!!!! "dan wright" <dw420@nospammepleezairmail.net> wrote in message news:F1575F5FB071176C.3FDA20F31B682A38.A09868611AA230C5@lp.airnews.net... > I just wanted some input from people who have worked primarily in > Informix, but also at least dabbled w/ Oracle. > > I'm not worried about technicalites of importing Informix data into an > Orcale databsae...I'm more interested in anything of signifigance in > working w/ Oracle. From my preliminary impressions w/ NetG training CDs > (which are a waste of money IMnsHO) and reading an O'Reilly PL/SQL book > - at about 1/10 the cost of NetG's crappy CDs, it is probably 10 times > more informative. > > Anyway, SQL is SQL isn't it? I imagine DBA work will be more different > than basic app development, but app development will be different > enough.... > > What's your experience? >

I think, there are a lot off difficulties: - Oracle's locking concept is very different - no 'serial, small int, int' datatypes - other date format The precompilers are much more accurately. Wolfgang Kuhn Mail: wolfgang.kuhn@uni-data.de "dan wright" <dw420@nospammepleezairmail.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:F1575F5FB071176C.3FDA20F31B682A38.A09868611AA230C5@lp.airnews.net... > I just wanted some input from people who have worked primarily in > Informix, but also at least dabbled w/ Oracle. > > I'm not worried about technicalites of importing Informix data into an > Orcale databsae...I'm more interested in anything of signifigance in > working w/ Oracle. From my preliminary impressions w/ NetG training CDs > (which are a waste of money IMnsHO) and reading an O'Reilly PL/SQL book > - at about 1/10 the cost of NetG's crappy CDs, it is probably 10 times > more informative. > > Anyway, SQL is SQL isn't it? I imagine DBA work will be more different > than basic app development, but app development will be different > enough.... > > What's your experience? >