Support for nested tables?

Nice feature but I don't see the use of it in a relational database.

Could you explain what you would want to achieve with this?

WesleyB

Visit my SQL Server weblog @ http://dis4ea.blogspot.com

? Then the question to ask is "do more than 5 Oracle customers use nested tables"? And what are *they* using it for? Quite a few things made it into SQL-99 as a concession to the OODMS folks, which were a force in the 90s. This may have been where nested table came from. Cheers, Bob Beauchemin SQLskills ""Burkazoid2005"@discussions.microsoft.com" <"=?UTF-8?B?QnVya2F6b2lkMjAwNQ==?="@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:9095e0a2-4a81-464f-a1b3-07aee60d7b00@discussions.microsoft.com...Oh, someone else at work asked me about it. This developer has been working hand in hand with Oracle for some time, and nested tables have been a feature in Oracle for quite some time. He's one of those who still think MSSQL is still a childs toy since it lacks some of the features of Oracle. This behavior, of course, from people who almost exclusively use cursors in their code.Personally, I don't see the benefit of having nested tables myself; it breaks all the normalization rules.I haven't seen anything to the contrary, so I'm taking it as a 'no' for user-defined table support in a column.

Funny story about 1 to 1 feature compatibility...

...a different department at my workplace is involved in a Banner implementation for a student information system (Luminaire portal, etc). If you're not familiar with it, it uses Oracle 10g behind the scenes. Their still in the midst of the implementation, but have been having all types of training classes (the department currently uses ADABAS & COBOL, with CICS on zOS) to bring their old-timers up to speed on Oracle, querying, and generally thinking in sets.

Now, I have my MSSQL 2005 cert, and I'm a Microsoft proponent, but generally I consider myself to be relatively agnostic with it comes to what technology I use. If they told me tomorrow I had to use Java & Oracle, well, ok then. Whatever puts money in my pocket and food on the table. Anyway, when it comes to MSSQL vs Oracle my opinion is that they are more alike than they are different. I try to keep an open mind.

Having said all that, I sat in on one of the training classes, and this old lady was lecturing, looked to be in her sixties, said she programmed COBOL for twenty years, then converted to Oracle, blah-blah, right? She finds out I'm an MSSQL MCP, and asks me the question "Has Microsoft added support for large object types yet?" I said, "Yes, for about ten years or so now."

I hung around for about thirty more minutes and left bored out of my mind. No one realizes that MSSQL is a SYSTEM now, not just a rdbms. MSSQL has come a LONG way. Oracle may have supported the SQL language first, but Microsoft makes it easier to be productive. To-MAY-to, to-MAH-to, you know how it is.

Honestly, I prefer MySQL to Oracle. But, Oracle knowledge pays better.

I digress...I think my question has been answered by now LOL.