I have been using SQL Server for the last few years.
It is very user friendly and has a gentle learning curve.
It is very user friendly and has a gentle learning curve.
Investigating a port to Oracle has been a real culture shock.
Out of the box Oracle only has a command-line interface.
To get the equivalent of Query Analyser in Oracle you need to
use a third party tool such as TOAD or PL/Developer.
SQL Server is also more flexible when dealing with stored procedures – you can directly return recordsets. Oracle is very strict when dealing with stored procedures all output must be via parameters.
To Oracle’s benefit they have much stronger error handling. SQL Server stored procedures cannot be used to catch constraint validation errors. This is rather annoying and forces a look before you leap approach.
Developer Rants 