I completely agree about the usability thing. But I still think that Oracle makes a better database than Microsoft. They have just successfully hid that fact through their lack of useful or practical tools.
Why use toad, or SqlPlus when you can use Query Analyzer ?
I haven't been ambitious enough to set it up myself to test it out, but one of Oracle's main selling points for 10g is that it 'will administer itself'. I sure hope so, because it never did before. With the price drop on Oracle Standard edition I think the only thing they are lacking is an atleast half decent IDE. If they don't come out with one, then I think the new Workbench will wreak some major havok on Oracle's ability to sell their flagship product.
I find myself torn between the two.
We are doing a lot of projects with Oracle, and I must say I absolutely agree with you.
I'm far from being DB expert, but I do know how to backup, restore, import, exprot, attach, detach and scedule in SQL Server, but I have no clue how to do that in Oracle. Oh yes, I do know how to do this with PL/SQL Developer, but that's not Oracle product, is it?
FYI: The "identities across multiple tables" is called a sequence. It's not really the same as an identity column, because it isn't automatic. You need to request a number from it and insert that into a table.
Anyway, I did some work with Oracle 8i and I didn't really enjoy it. The database being case sensitive was annoying, length limitations on column names, table names, and key names was even more so!
I totally disagree... let get into perspective.
I'm sorry to inform most of you that an Oracle DBA is a profession, and quite a good one. Oracle is NOT intended for point & click (the personal editions are for training at home).
Oracle has a lot more options so you could have performance and scalability. If you need to develop by yourself without a DBA, that's ok, use SQL Server and enjoy the warm feeling of the All-Microsoft touch (SQL server will let you drag & drop most of the database design mistakes from Access)
If you are planning a big project with serious issues of performance and high-availability, in most cases you would get yourself a decend Oracle DBA, do whatever you develop with the DBA working on his side.
With Oracle it's just the same with everything - Learning earning and yearning !