Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Oracle buys Innobase

pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org wrote on 10/19/2005 12:35:25 AM:

> Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl(at)familyhealth(dot)com(dot)au> writes:
> > Strangely a pgsql to oracle exporter is a good thing. It'd be a great
> > feature of PostgreSQL. Imagine how many people would start on
> > PostgreSQL if they KNEW that one day they could easily move to Oracle
if
> > they needed to. Risk management.
>
> Problem is: to offer such a thing with a straight face, we'd have to
> confine ourselves to an Oracle-subset version of SQL. For instance,
> lose the ability to distinguish empty-string from NULL.

Yep. It is not just limited to empty strings; An all blank string, no
matter the number of characters, is stored as NULL. And a corollary to
that idiocy is that a string with two blank characters is not equal to a
string with a single blank character in Oracle. 'a ' is not equal to 'a
'. 'a ' is not equal to 'a'. Port that to another database. Seen the
JOIN syntax? *sigh*

Rick

>
> regards, tom lane
>
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