Oracle V Microsoft

[GBH123]

I need your help, I have a candidate (yes I am a Recruiter but new to IT) who has 15 years experience of developing in oracle. Particularly SQL and PL/SQL. He wants to move over to SQL Server and MS however most clients will not look at assisting in the training required. For those out there those have changed from one to the other please could you tell me how you went about it and how difficult it was?
Thank you in advance

[Rebecca Loos]

In my view it is a piece of cake as long as the person either already knows how to program using MS type languages e.g. .net, vb etc or can assimilate them pretty quickly, i.e. they are already a programmer and not just a SQL person.

If this is for a DBA position then it is quite different altogether as the DBA tasks, traps and objects are quite different - depends on the platform too, if they're an Oracle DBA specifized in UNIX environments and you move them to a Windows NT-based MS SQL Server environment, it is a reasonable change that requires time to adjust

[GBH123]

Thank you Rebecca

The candidate is more programmer than DBA experience in COBOL and PL/SQL

Thanks for your help it’s a tough time getting my head round all the different abbreviations and languages.

Would always appreciate help

[Joe Black]

If it's a case of a programmer just using a DB as a back-end, then it comes down to his/her experience of MS development, which once you know it's a case of one DB is the same as another.

If it's primarily SQL and PL/SQL as you mentioned then in general for 90%+ of work theres b*gger all difference, with the caveat of course of the way Oracle structures/organises things compared to MS, e.g. Enterprise Manager compared to Oracles equivalent...still we're talking a few days/week here for someone half decent...

If it's a case of add-ons, Oracle Forms/Financials et al, then it's a different ball game.

Joe in "my New Years resolution is to provide helpful advice" mode.

[GBH123]

Thank's Joe

so glad you are not dead

[mcquiggd]

I think MS are getting closer to Oracles core market slowly but surely... Ive worked on some fairly major projects with SQL Server 7 and 2000.... Im currently familiarising myself with SQL Server 2005....

Ive found version 2000 to be a very good 'departmental' / medium scale public facing internet database platform... fairly cost effective and well integrated with the other server and development tools.

Ive recently been helping a friend who is learning Java with Eclipse... frankly its noddy compared to Visual Studio 2005 (or even 2003). Its not just the database backend that is considered seperately anymore - its a whole raft of systems / development tools for even a modestly scoped project, and thats where MS has a good set of products.