My goto was Tom Kyte (https://asktom.oracle.com) for learning the 'why'. Burleson is an interesting character, but not always correct either.

Last I've heard of Tom Kyte: https://archive.is/20150928144011/http://www.oracle.com/tech...

His answers were sometimes prime examples of what is today known as seriously unwelcoming. But I remember I un-learned the "best practices" meme reading one of his answers. In fact it was just one sentence, some concise version of "if the 'best' setting existed, nobody would bother to make it a configurable option". But it clicked.

Burleson's more advanced answers were of limited usefulness, because they have never mentioned the exact oracle version. They often have been only valid for antiques like Oracle 7.

Tom Kyte books were great and beyond Oracle, I learned a lot about databases generally from them.

My SO was a Oracle DBA and she swore by Kyte's books.

To be really fair, have you ever seen SQL error messages that don't suck? I do agree that Oracle's are the worst by far though.

I feel Postgres and SQL Server are easier to grok error states. Oracle seems to want to be an application platform more than a datastore

I don't have the experience to compare them to Oracle, but SQL Server and Postgres do have their own issues.

The infamous MSSQL "string or binary data will be truncated" error (fixed a while ago[0]), or the way either deals with unqualified access to columns which leads to surprises (e.g. in MSSQL subqueries or in Postgres's SECURITY DEFINER procedures).

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/database-console-...

Oh indeed, they all have quirks.

Oracle seems to have more than most, IMO.

I have a journeyman data engineering level experience with each. Rare combo I guess, Data Scientist focus.

Exactly, Oracle should be chosen when business logic is written in sql/plsql

On Oracle most of the error messages are bad, not precise enough or plainly wrong. Basic things like a wrong error line (failure is on line 3, displays 5 or 6), messages that aren't related to the real issue. You're pretty much on your own.

Also, I had to switch to DBeaver since Oracle SQL Developer made things worse with random crashes and freezes. Back when I used it, an easy way to freeze the editor was connecting to a DB via VPN and then suddenly disconnect. The connection gets stuck, parts of the UI get frozen and after a while the whole thing freezes.

MySQL/MariaDB and Postgres are better.

To be fair, I had to switch to DBeaver for Postgres as well, as pgAdmin’s usability has been steadily decreasing since the first release of version 4. The lack of quality GUI is essentially my only problem with Postgres, though.

Tom Kite is/was great, but his answers are the equivalent of "I'm glad you asked, pull up a chair and let me tell you a story about a white whale..."