When I started my job the one thing that was new to me was Oracle. As a developer I am hear to tell you that you don't need to be scared to learn it. While there are some major differences (especially in 8i) there is nothing overwhelming to learn. I am speaking from a developers standpoint, I am sure that a DBA would tell me its a different world but I am no DBA and I don't even play one on TV.
The first thing I had to get used to was some terminology. If there was a physical database machine and I created different databases I would refer to each instance as a database. I guess its more common in this world to refer to each as a Schema. Again, maybe someone could fill me in on this but its just what I am noticing here. The first thing you need to do if find yourself a tool to manage your schema's in. I am coming from the world of MSSQL so I am really use to enterprise manager. Here are some alternatives that can get you up and going quickly.
- Oracle Developer - This is a free tool from oracle and it has a nice familiar feel to it.
- Orace SQL Plus - Another free tool from Oracle, its a command line only tool
- TOAD - A commercial tool that is quite popular. I installed it and it just seemed a little over the top for me.
- Aqua Data Studio This is easily my favorite new tool in my tool belt and I plan on devoting a whole writeup on it so stay tuned.
I have a ton of things that you might run into as a developer so stay tuned for some tips.
#1 by Zac Spitzer on 12/15/08 - 8:40 PM
oracle is a real nice db, there are few things to get used to but it's really mature..
I like sequences a lot... gives you much more control than auto identity, which is really useful when your doing complex stuff
Sql Developer also supports other db's as well