DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORACLE & SQL Server

ORACLE SQL Server DESCRIPTION

%TYPE data type No equivalent The %TYPE data type of Oracle, lets you create a
variable and have that variable's data type be
defined by a table or view column or a PL/SQL
package variable.

There is no equivalent for Oracle's %TYPE datatype in

T-SQL, but it can be simulated (not very conveniently
though) using User Defined Data types (UDT). Here
is an example:

EXEC sp_addtype 'MyType', 'smallint', NULL

CREATE TABLE MyTable (i MyType)

CREATE PROC MyProc

AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @i MyType
END

BEFORE triggers INSTEAD OF

triggers Use INSTEAD OF trigger in SQL Server as an
equivalent to Oracle's BEFORE trigger.

For more information on INSTEAD OF triggers, see

SQL Server Books Online

DECODE() CASE
function expression DECODE can be conveniently simulated using the T-
SQL CASE expression. Here's an example:

SELECT Sport,
CASE Sport
WHEN 'Cricket' THEN 'England'
WHEN 'Hockey' THEN 'India'
WHEN 'Base Ball' THEN 'America'
ELSE NULL
END AS 'Originating Country'
FROM Sports

DESCRIBE sp_help or
sp_columns There are a lot of alternatives for Oracle's DESCRIBE,
in SQL Server. You could use the system stored
procedure sp_help for detailed information about a
table's columns and other properties.
 If sp_help is providing you with too much
information, then try the ODBC catalog stored
procedure, sp_columns.

There are a bunch of other useful sp_help* stored

procedures available in SQL Server. You can find
more information about those in SQL Server Books
Online.

If none of those procedures are suitable for your

requirements, then you could query the system view
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS, to get the
desired information. You could wrap your code inside
a stored procedure named DESCRIBE, if you wish.

As a last resort, you could even query system tables

like sysobjects and syscolumns, but this is not a
recommended approach.

DUAL table No equivalent

There is no DUAL table in SQL Server. In fact, you
don't need one in SQL Server, as you can have a
SELECT statement without a FROM clause.

For example, consider the following SELECT

statement in Oracle:

SELECT 'Something'
FROM DUAL

In SQL Server, the same result can be obtained by

the following command:

SELECT 'Something'

If you are porting some code from Oracle into SQL

Server and if you don't want to remove all references
to DUAL table, then just create a DUAL table in your
database using the following commands:

CREATE TABLE DUAL

(
DUMMY varchar(1)
)

INSERT INTO DUAL (DUMMY) VALUES ('X')

INTERSECT Not supported

operator Use EXISTS clause to generate the same result.
 The following example illustrates the simulation of
Oracle's INTERSECT operator:

SELECT OrderID, OrderDate

FROM Orders O
WHERE EXISTS
(
SELECT 1
FROM RefundsTable R
WHERE O.OrderID = R.OrderID
)

MINUS operator Not supported

Use NOT EXISTS clause in your SELECT statement to
generate the same result.

The following example illustrates the simulation of

Oracle's MINUS operator:

SELECT OrderID, OrderDate

FROM Orders O
WHERE NOT EXISTS
(
SELECT 1
FROM RefundsTable R
WHERE O.OrderID = R.OrderID
)

Nested tables Not supported

Oracle 8i and prior versions didn't support this
feature and is introduced in Oracle 9i. This feature
basically enables you to store a table, within a
column. It is like having an array of records in your
database columns.

SQL Server has no concept of nested tables.

As a workaround, You could store your sub-tables or

child tables in the form of XML inside a char, nchar,
varchar, nvarchar, text or ntext type column, and
parse it as needed, at runtime. See OPENXML,
sp_xml_preparedocument, sp_xml_removedocument
in SQL Server 2000 Books Online.

Another possible workaround would be to store

comma separated values (CSV).

Note that this is against the basic rules of

normalization. Columns are nomore atomic, with
nested tables.
 From a design point of view, best thing to do would
be, to create different tables for representing
different entities and link them with primary and
foreign key relationships. This will also make
searching easier.

Packages Not supported

No equivalent in SQL Server for Oracle's Packages
and Package variables concept

PL/SQL T-SQL
PROGRAMMING Every database product implements and extends the
standard SQL. Oracle's implementation of SQL is
called PL/SQL, while Microsoft's is called T-SQL
(Transact-SQL)

Row level No equivalent

security Though there is no inbuilt support in SQL Server for
row level permissions, you can implement it using
view and system functions.

For more information and a working example, read

this article:

Implementing row level permissions/security in SQL

Server databases

rownum pseudo No equivalent

column Though there is no rownum or rowid in SQL Server,
there are several ways in which a row number can be
generated.

For some examples, read this article:

Q186133 INF: How to Dynamically Number Rows in a

Select Statement

SELECT...FOR UPDLOCK hint

UPDATE Use the locking hint UPDLOCK in your SELECT
statement.

See SQL Server Books Online for more information.

Sequences IDENTITY
It is much simpler in SQL Server to generate a
sequence value for a primary key or a non-key
column.

You just need to turn on the IDENTITY property of

 column. IDENTITY property can be set to columns of
the following data types: tinyint, smallint, int, bigint,
decimal, numeric

Try this example to see how it works:

CREATE TABLE foo

(
i int IDENTITY(1, 1)
j int
)

INSERT INTO foo (j) VALUES (911)

INSERT INTO foo (j) VALUES (999)

SQL *Plus Query

Analyzer/ For connecting to SQL Server and executing queries
SSMS and modifying data, use the built-in Query Analyzer.
It is much more powerful and friendlier than Oracle's
SQL *Plus

START No equivalent
WITH...CONNECT Though there's no direct equivalent in T-SQL for
BY clause Oracle's START WITH...CONNECT BY, there are
several ways and efficient techniques for processing
and querying hierarcical data.

For more information, read this article:

Working with hierarchical data in SQL Server

databases

Synonym Views
You can simulate Oracle Synonyms in SQL Server
using Views. For example, the following creates a
view that returns the OrderID and OrderDate from
Orders table.

CREATE VIEW vOrders

AS
SELECT OrderID, OrderDate
FROM Orders

Now you can select data from the view, using the
following SELECT statement:

SELECT * FROM vOrders

The following example will create a view which is

equivalent to Oracles TABS synonym or
USER_TABLES data dictionary view (For simplicity, I
am only including the table name in the view
definition):

CREATE VIEW TABS

AS
SELECT name AS table_name
FROM sysobjects
WHERE type = 'U'

Now you can execute the following SELECT statement

to return all user table names:

SELECT table_name
FROM TABS