Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Compared (2024)

INTEGER

Four-byte integer, 31 bits, and a sign. May be abbreviated as "INT" (this abbreviation was required prior to version 5).

NUMBER(10)

It is possible to place a table constraint on columns of this type (as an option) to force values between -2^31 and2^31. Or, place appropriate constraints such as: STATE_NO between 1 and 50

SMALLINT

Two-byte integer, 15 bits, and a sign.

NUMBER(6)

It is possible to place a table constraint on columns of this type (optionally) to force values between -2^15 and 2^15. Or, place appropriate constraints such as: STATE_NO between 1 and 50

TINYINT

One byte integer, 8 bits and no sign. Holds whole numbers between 0 and 255.

NUMBER(3)

You may add a check constraint of (x between 0 and 255) where x is column name.

REAL

Floating point number. Storage is four bytes and has a binary precision of 24 bits, a 7-digit precision.

Data can range from –3.40E+38 to 3.40E+38.

FLOAT

The ANSI data type conversion to Oracle for REAL is FLOAT(63). By default, the Oracle Migration Workbench maps REAL to FLOAT(24) that stores up to 8 significant decimal digits in Oracle.

The Oracle NUMBER data type is used to store both fixed and floating-point numbers in a format that is compatible with decimal arithmetic. You may want to add a check constraint to constrain range of values. Also, you get different answers when performing operations on this data type as the Oracle NUMBER type is more precise and portable than REAL. Floating-point numbers can be specified in Oracle in the following format: FLOAT[(b)]. Where [(b)] is the binary precision b and can range from 1 to 126. [(b)] defaults to 126. To check what a particular binary precision is in terms of decimal precision, multiply [(b)] by 0.30103 and round up to the next whole number.

FLOAT

A floating point number. This column has 15-digit precision.

FLOAT

The ANSI data type conversion to Oracle for FLOAT(p) is FLOAT(p). The ANSI data type conversion to Oracle for DOUBLE PRECISION is FLOAT(126). By default, the Oracle Migration Workbench maps FLOAT to FLOAT(53), that stores up to 16 significant decimal digits in Oracle.

The Oracle NUMBER data type is used to store both fixed and floating-point numbers in a format compatible with decimal arithmetic.You get different answers when performing operations on this type due to the fact that the Oracle NUMBER type is much more precise and portable than FLOAT, but it does not have the same range. The NUMBER data type data can range from -9.99.99E+125 to 9.99.99E+125 (38 nines followed by 88 zeros).

NOTE: If you try to migrate floating point data greater than or equal to 1.0E+126 then Migration Workbench will fail to insert this data in the Oracle database and1 will return an error.This also applies to negative values less than or equal to -1.0E+126.

Floating-point numbers can be specified in Oracle using FLOAT[(b)], where [(b)] is the binary precision [(b)] and can range from 1 to 126. [(b)] defaults to 126.To check what a particular binary precision is in terms of decimal precision multiply [(b)] by 0.30103 and round up to the next whole number.

If they are outside of the range, large floating-point numbers will overflow, and small floating-point numbers will underflow.

BIT

A Boolean 0 or 1 stored as one bit of a byte. Up to 8-bit columns from a table may be stored in a single byte, even if not contiguous. Bit data cannot be NULL, except for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, where null is allowed by the BIT data type.

NUMBER(1)

In Oracle, a bit is stored in a number(1) (or char). In Oracle, it is possible to store bits in a char or varchar field (packed) and supply PL/SQL functions to set / unset / retrieve / query on them.

CHAR(n)

Fixed-length string of exactly n 8-bit characters, blank padded. Synonym for CHARACTER. 0 < n < 256 for Microsoft SQL Server. 0 < n < 8000 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.

CHAR(n)

Pro*C client programs must use mode=ansi to have characters interpreted correctly for string comparison, mode=oracle otherwise.

A CHAR data type with a range of 2001 to 4000 is invalid. SQL Developer automatically converts a CHAR datatype with this range to VARCHAR2.

VARCHAR(n)

Varying-length character string. 0 < n < 256 for Microsoft SQL Server. 0 < n < 8000 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.

VARCHAR2(n)

TEXT

Character string of 8-bit bytes allocated in increments of 2k pages. "TEXT" is stored as a linked-list of 2024-byte pages, blank padded. TEXT columns can hold up to (231-1) characters.

CLOB

The CLOB field can hold up to 4GB.

IMAGE

Binary string of 8-bit bytes. Holds up to (231-1) bytes of binary data.

BLOB

The BLOB field can hold up to 4GB.

BINARY(n)

Fixed length binary string of exactly n 8-bit bytes. 0 < n < 256 for Microsoft SQL Server. 0 < n < 8000 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.

RAW(n)/BLOB

VARBINARY(n)

Varying length binary string of up to n 8-bit bytes. 0 < n < 256 for Microsoft SQL Server. 0 < n < 8000 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.

RAW(n)/BLOB

DATETIME

Date and time are stored as two 4-byte integers. The date portion is represented as a count of the number of days offset from a baseline date (1/1/1900) and is stored in the first integer. Permitted values are legal dates between 1st January, 1753 AD and 31st December, 9999 AD. Permitted values in the time portion are legal times in the range 0 to 25920000. Accuracy is to the nearest 3.33 milliseconds with rounding downward. Columns of type DATETIME have a default value of 1/1/1900.

DATE

The precision of DATE in Oracle and DATETIME in Microsoft SQL Server is different. The DATETIME data type has higher precision than the DATE data type. This may have some implications if the DATETIME column is supposed to be UNIQUE. In Microsoft SQL Server, the column of type DATETIME can contain UNIQUE values because the DATETIME precision in Microsoft SQL Server is to the hundredth of a second. In Oracle, however, these values may not be UNIQUE as the date precision is to the second. You can replace a DATETIME column with two columns, one with data type DATE and another with a sequence, in order to get the UNIQUE combination. It is preferable to store hundredths of seconds in the second column.

The Oracle TIMESTAMP data type can also be used. It has a precision of 1/10000000th of a second.

SMALL-DATETIME

Date and time stored as two 2-byte integers. Date ranges from 1/1/1900 to 6/6/2079. Time is the count of the number of minutes since midnight.

DATE

With optional check constraint to validate the smaller range.

MONEY

A monetary value represented as an integer portion and a decimal fraction, and stored as two 4-byte integers. Accuracy is to the nearest 1/10,000. When inputting Data of this type it should be preceded by a dollar sign ($). In the absence of the "$" sign, Microsoft SQL Server creates the value as a float.

Monetary data values can range from -922,337,203,685,477.5808 to 922,337,203,685,477.5807, with accuracy to a ten-thousandth of a monetary unit. Storage size is 8 bytes.

NUMBER(19,4)

Microsoft SQL Server inputs MONEY data types as a numeric data type with a preceding dollar sign ($) as in the following example, select * from table_x where y > $5.00 You must remove the "$" sign from queries. Oracle is more general and works in international environments where the use of the "$" sign cannot be assumed. Support for other currency symbols and ISO standards through NLS is available in Oracle.

NCHAR(n)

Fixed-length character data type which uses the UNICODE UCS-2 character set. n must be a value in the range 1 to 4000. SQL Server storage size is two times n.

Note: Microsoft SQL Server storage size is two times n. The Oracle Migration Workbench maps columns sizes using byte semantics, and the size of Microsoft SQL Server NCHAR data types appear in the Oracle Migration Workbench Source Model with "Size" specifying the number of bytes, as opposed to the number of Unicode characters. Thus, a SQL Server column NCHAR(1000) will appear in the Source Model as NCHAR(2000).

CHAR(n*2)

NVARCHAR(n)

Fixed-length character data type which uses the UNICODE UCS-2 character set. n must be a value in the range 1 to 4000. SQL Server storage size is two times n.

Note: Microsoft SQL Server storage size is two times n. The Oracle Migration Workbench maps columns sizes using byte semantics, and the size of Microsoft SQL Server NVARCHAR data types appear in the Oracle Migration Workbench Source Model with "Size" specifying the number of bytes, as opposed to the number of Unicode characters. Thus, a SQL Server column NVARCHAR(1000) will appear in the Source Model as NVARCHAR(2000).

VARCHAR(n*2)

SMALLMONEY

Same as MONEY except monetary data values from -214,748.3648 to +214,748.3647, with accuracy to one ten-thousandth of a monetary unit. Storage size is 4 bytes.

NUMBER(10,4)

Since the range is -214,748.3648 to 214,748.364, NUMBER(10,4) suffices for this field.

TIMESTAMP

TIMESTAMP is defined as VARBINARY(8) with NULL allowed. Every time a row containing a TIMESTAMP column is updated or inserted, the TIMESTAMP column is automatically increment by the system. A TIMESTAMP column may not be updated by users.

NUMBER

You must place triggers on columns of this type to maintain them. In Oracle you can have multiple triggers of the same type without having to integrate them all into one big trigger. You may want to supply triggers to prevent updates of this column to enforce full compatibility.

SYSNAME

VARCHAR(30) in Microsoft SQL Server.

NVARCHAR(128) in Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.

VARCHAR2(30) and VARCHAR2(128) respectively.

Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Compared (2024)

FAQs

How is Microsoft SQL Server compared to Oracle? ›

Although both Oracle and SQL Server are built on SQL, they do have a number of differences. Microsoft SQL Server uses Transact-SQL, while Oracle uses PL/SQL. These two variations have different syntax, capabilities, and handle some things (like variables, built-in functions, and stored procedures) differently.

Is Oracle harder than SQL? ›

One of the main differences between Oracle and SQL Server is the ease of use. Oracle is considered complicated to use because its syntax is more complicated than SQL. On the other hand, because SQL Server uses a syntax similar to SQL, it's an easier system to use.

How to compare data between SQL Server and Oracle? ›

One gotcha to watch out for in the comparison is thatin SQL Server a varchar or nvarchar of '' is a non-null empty string. In Oracle '' the same as null. Depending on your comparison tools and methods SQL Servers '' may be flagged as different from Oracle's '' because of that.

Which one is easy, Oracle or SQL? ›

Oracle is typically more complex to manage, has a higher learning curve, and costs more to maintain. Both Oracle and SQL Server come with their own “dialect” of the SQL language that extends the basic functionality of SQL. Oracle uses PL/SQL (Procedural Language/SQL), while SQL Server uses T-SQL (Transact-SQL).

Why is Oracle better than Microsoft? ›

OCI over Microsoft Azure. A public cloud built for mission-critical, enterprise workloads. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is built for any application needing higher performance, lower cost, and deployment closer to end users.

Why use Oracle instead of SQL? ›

If you plan to have many terabytes of data, then Oracle SQL is the way to go. Also, because Oracle is meant for many simultaneous transactions, it has a noticeably larger connection pool than MySQL. In addition to large connection pools, Oracle allows for a multitude of different ways to index data.

Is SQL Server slower than Oracle? ›

Both Oracle and SQL Server databases are in same server. And RAM = 48 GB . Following is a simple INSERT , inserting 1000 records to a test table. This takes more than 150 milliseconds in SQL Server and in Oracle this takes around 30 milliseconds.

What is the difference between MySQL and Oracle? ›

Oracle is optimized for large-scale operations with high-performance strategies and Real Application Clusters, whereas MySQL excels at managing smaller-scale relational databases and offers both vertical and horizontal scalability.

What is the difference between Oracle schema and MS SQL schema? ›

An Oracle schema is associated with a single user and consists of the objects owned by the user. A MS SQL Server schema is a namespace.

Which is more popular, Oracle or SQL Server? ›

As of June 2024, the most popular database management system (DBMS) worldwide was Oracle, with a ranking score of 1244.08; MySQL and Microsoft SQL server rounded out the top three.

What is the hardest thing to learn in SQL? ›

Learning SQL can be challenging due to advanced concepts such as recursive queries, query tuning, temporary functions, and self-joins.

Is Oracle SQL enough to get a job? ›

It is not enough to know SQL alone. You need other skills as well in order to get a job. SQL is a great place to start though.

Which is better MySQL or Oracle? ›

While MySQL is capable of handling large volumes of data and high traffic, Oracle is often preferred for very large enterprise applications due to its advanced features and enterprise-level support.

Which is faster SQL Server or Oracle? ›

When it comes to performance, both SQL Server and Oracle are very powerful. However, Oracle is known to perform better in larger-scale enterprise-level applications. SQL Server is a good option for smaller-scale applications.

Why is Microsoft SQL Server better than other databases? ›

MS SQL provides advanced security features like row-level security and built-in data encryption, which are crucial for organizations with stringent security requirements.

What is the equivalent of Oracle in SQL Server? ›

SQL Server has a TEXT datatype and the Oracle equivalent to this is the LONG datatype.

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