Oracle Express 10g for beginners?

Question

I am keeping track of fund raising activities at a school and was pondering using Oracle Express to track the donations and where the money goes, who gave etc. I could just use a couple of spreadsheets. But as I haven't set things up yet I was thinking it could be an opportunity to learn some Oracle via their scaled down and free Express version. To create a small (say 5000 records) database with subtotals for people and so on - would Oracle Express be too complex for a beginner? I have other computer experience (operating systems, networking.) Thanks.

Answer 1

10g express isn't too complicated, but you'll need to learn about schemas and tablespaces, which aren't always the clearest concepts for people to get a hang of when they're starting.

The tools it comes with are pretty good for getting started, but it might also be useful for you to grab the free SQL Developer program from Oracle, which gives you a more straightforward view of the database as your application would see it rather than how the management tools view it.

If you've never worked with a database before, the open source MySQL database might be a better starting point, as there's lots more people in your position using it, so there are more resources on the Internet to help you out.