Irc channel?? / converting from Oracle

I tried using the #postgres channel on efnet (various servers), is that
channel very active? what times does it get traffic?? I tried sitting there
the other day and someone (a bot?) was kicking everyone after 1 minute
idle...?

I'm currently converting a system from Oracle to Postgresql, the original
design used only simple sequences/triggers (now moved across to sequences in
pgsql) with the majority of the work in java servlets. (providing web
interface) seems to be coming together nicely.

few little things I found useful.
- the syntax below works in Oracle and Postgresql

create table sample(
attrib1 varchar(20),
attrib2 numeric, --results in default numeric(30,6)
being generated
attrib3 numeric(5), --results in numeric(5,0)
constraint some_name_u_choose primary key(attrib1),
constraint some_name_u_choose2 foreign key table_name(attrib_name)
);

select sysdate from dual;
in Oracle gets replaced with
select current_timestamp
in Postgres. (refer the postgres manual, an excellent document!!!)

select to_char(current_timestamp, 'dd-mm-yyyy');
formats dates in dd-mm-yyyy format (or use Mon to get Jan, Feb etc)

Q: does anyone know where the standard syntax for this is defined? is this a
SQL92 standard? (I've previously picked this up from my Oracle manuals)

I'm looking at using asp, since a number of colleagues have mentioned they
find signicicent reductions in devel time... any comments? (off topic I
suspect)

so far I've had no major problems and been very impressed (installed 7.0.3
RPM on linux 6.2)

Matthew
(Brisbane Australia)

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