Hi Jaekarp

>Not sure I'm a really seasoned Oracle user though, I think I have a couple of things to say 'Why Oracle' or 'About Oracle' or whatever. (^^)

I'm sure your knowledge of Oracle would easily dwarf mine ;-)

>1. Your frustration about Oracle Syntax.
>; I felt the same when I first use MS-based SQL-related products such as SQL-server and Access etc because I was too much used to Oracle SQL for years before. For example when you need outer join between two tables, the only thing you should do with Oracle is to use '(+)'. But with SQL server you need extra typing for the same result.

My problem with the application I'm working on is that I can't code using Oracle-specific functions. The application [which I am merely modifying] is designed to work on a variety of back ends [currently VFP, Oracle and SQL Server] without having a different version of the application for each back end.

The trick I was using with GROUP BY worked on two of the platforms, but not on Oracle.

What does the ANSI standard actually say about GROUP BY ? I'm sure FoxPro worked like this before Microsoft bought Fox Software, so this isn't merely a Microsoft thing.

>I'm not saying Oracle is better. Later I learned such convenient syntaxes in Oracle are another SQL dialects from ANSI-SQL. But I think such Oracle-specific functions or SQL Syntax are really handy when you need. For example 'DECODE' or 'CONNECT BY' are such things.
>
>If you need more information or knowledge about Oracle , let me introduce a couple of books
>; The complete Reference Oracle, McGraw-Hill
> ( It's good for newbies to understand Oracle functions and syntax).
>; Oracle Programming with Visual Basic ( Nick Snowdon, Sybex )
> Half of this book covers the Concept of Oracle DBMS.

I may look into that. However, as I've said, the code I produce has to provide the same results from all three back ends. It's possible we could code a case statement to vary the queries sent to the back end depending on what the back end is.

>In my case, I use VFP with Oracle mostly for data reporting and OLAP-like functions. VFP is ,as far as I know, the only tool that can locally query cursor that is taken from back-end Server. This is really fantastic one.

I'm really a Fox programmer, Oracle and SQL Server are both fairly new to me.

>Anyway I'm really glad Oracle session began in UT.

Yes, it's worthwhile having the forum here - especially for those of us who get dropped in at the deep end ;-)

Best.

Matt.