[sakai2-tcc] Oracle Database Support

[Seth Theriault]

Matthew Jones wrote:

> This became an issue lately with conversion scripts, as most 
> of them were written (on the oracle side) for 10g specific 
> functions, and it really made writing them quite a bit 
> easier. We also could potentially take advantage of feature 
> of newer database if we weren't supporting older versions.

I was bitten locally by the Oracle10+-isms contained in the 
2.6 conversion scripts, but I have workarounds for those 
of us living in the dark ages ;-).

Seriously, I think we will need to announce our intention to 
deprecate SPECIFIC Oracle9 support after, for example, the 2.8 
release. In this case, the deprecation means that we don't 
guarantee that stuff -- mostly conversions I expect -- will 
work in Oracle9 past that time and that we are free to use 
Oracle10+-isms at any moment.

We would need to communicate this early, often, and as widely 
as possible. In addition, we would probably need to offer 
solid advice on moving from LONGs to LOBs and making sure that 
OOTB Sakai doesn't create LONGS or other older/deprectaed data 
types like DATE (use TIMESTAMP).

Seth