Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

If your expectations are learned in one RDBMS and you move to another, you will always find things that "don't work as expected."

This is why it's a bad idea to assume you can treat RDBMSs as interchangeable black boxes, unless you confine yourself to the most basic subset of standard SQL.




That would be a good defence if he were talking about leaving out optional parts.

He is giving examples of violating the standard.


Just to clarify, I'm not trying to defend anything. Just stating a fact.

I've seen the same thing with experienced SQL Server developers who come into an Oracle-based project: they gripe about how Oracle is "weird" or "doesn't do what I expect" and then they eventually accept reality and get on with the project.


So, just out of curiosity, which other RDBMS doesn't violate the standard?


I never said that.


I honestly think it's a very informative article, clearly SQL Server doesn't adhere to the standard (whichever one you choose) but I'm not aware of any RDBMS that does so I was curious as to whether there was one.

There's lots of amazing databases around, each has their own quirks and as the gp says it's generally difficult to drop in replacements due to those quirks. There's a few listed in the article for SQL Server I'm sure anyone could easily find where others deviate from the spec too. But anyway getting back to what you said:

> He is giving examples of violating the standard

That's absolutely true and it's something every other RDBMS does.


> That's absolutely true and it's something every other RDBMS does.

To various degrees, and there's violating the standard (by adding non-standard construct) and violating the standard (by failing to implement a feature entirely, or implementing it with different syntax or semantics).

http://troels.arvin.dk/db/rdbms/ is generally my go-to page for that stuff as it lists standard solutions (with reference and mention of the features used being optional if applicable) and alternative db-specific solutions (exclusive or inclusive of the database accepting the standard solution). Sadly it is not really up to date, and obviously does not go through the whole standard.


Regarding my comment above, my troll filter obviously had serious issues yesterday. : )


I've learned that lesson as well. As much as web frameworks try to make the database interchangeable past a certain point it becomes amazingly difficult to switch.




Consider applying for YC's W25 batch! Applications are open till Nov 12.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: