I know this isn't PC of me to say and I didn't think it was physically possible, but Oracle both sucks and blows. I'm sorry, I hate it. The admin tools (if you can call them that) are beyond lame. A bit of advice: if you have to create a common database schema that will work for both SQL Server and Oracle (which some of us
LLBLGen Pro users do), design around Oracle (the lowest common denominator) and test often. Also, consider using the
Oracle migration workbench if you have an urgent need to port from SQL Server - it's not completely terrible if you can actually get it installed.
Absolutely make sure you have compatible data types (Oracle doesn't support bit fields, timestamp, etc). Don't use sequence or identity columns; consider GUID or create a table to manage incrementing a custom “identity-like“ primary keys (just update the value before inserting into the table in question).
A friend of mine and I argued about this (he's a die hard Java guy but he's still cool). His best “Oracle is better” argument was “it deals with large volumes of data better.” So, that prompted me to ask him if any of his databases was even 1TB. Of course, his were all in GBs. In case any of you are interested, Oracle 10g enterprise supports a max database size of 8EB. Which is pretty darn huge! SQL Server 2005 enterprise has no limit. Either way, the tool support for SQL Server is nothing short of outstanding. Oracle must be selling their products to CEOs that don't have to manage the product. The SQL Server team, on the other hand, sell to developers. Of course, I'm sure there are developers like my friend who like Oracle and if they want to go to 10 years of Oracle-clown-college to use the Oracle admin tools, more power to em'. :-)
