Command equivalents
- Show active sessions / running queries
- Find blocking / lock-waiting sessions
- Terminate (kill) a session / query
- View connection count and connection limit
- Show the total database size
- List the largest tables / collections
- Check free space / usage ratio
- Get the row / document count (fast)
- Find the slowest / most expensive queries
- Get a query's execution plan (EXPLAIN)
- Detect unused indexes
- Measure the cache hit ratio
- Take a logical backup (dump)
- Restore from backup
- Check last backup status / time
- List users / roles
- Create a user and grant privileges
- Show a user's privileges
- Change a user's password
- Update statistics (for the optimizer)
- Rebuild / reorganize an index
- Reclaim free space (shrink / vacuum / compact)
- Show version and uptime
- View a configuration parameter
- List tables / collections
- Show a table's columns / structure (describe)
- List a table's indexes
- Create an index
- Generate an object's DDL (CREATE statement)
- Show replication status and lag
- List replicas / cluster nodes
- Promote a replica / fail over (promote)
- Find open / long-running transactions
- Connect from the command line (CLI / connection string)
- List databases / schemas
- Change the active database / schema
- Create / split / drop a partition
- Create a sequence / auto-increment value
- Add or disable a constraint (FK/CHECK/UNIQUE)
- Create / modify a view
- Create and refresh a materialized view
- Rename a table / object
- Bulk load data (CSV / from file)
- Export data (CSV / to file)
- Copy data between tables / environments
- Generate data as an INSERT script
- List current locks
- View progress of long-running operations
- Trace a session / query (enable trace / profiling)
- View top wait events
- View server resource usage from inside the DB (CPU/IO)
- Create a scheduled job
- List scheduled jobs / view their status
- Enable auditing / logging
- List non-default settings
- Show installed version and patch level
- Pre-upgrade compatibility/readiness check
- Apply a patch
- Major version upgrade
- Set compatibility level / feature version
- Post-upgrade tasks (recompile/analyze)
- Diff two schemas/environments (schema diff)
- Consistent export for migration
- Import into the target
- Migrate to a different database (heterogeneous)
- Set up continuous replication / CDC (zero-downtime cutover)
- Post-migration verification (row count/checksum)
- Pin / force a query plan (plan baseline / hint)
- Gather statistics with advanced options (histograms, etc.)
- Generate a performance report (AWR / ASH and equivalents)
- View/change optimizer / parallelism settings
- Monitor running/recent SQL in real time
- Run a parallel query / set the degree of parallelism
- Manage bind variables / parameter sniffing
- Verify partition pruning
- Use a result / query cache
- Full-text search
- Query JSON data
- Geographic / spatial query
- Window functions (ROW_NUMBER/RANK/LAG)
- Columnar storage / analytics
- In-memory tables / acceleration
- Time-series data
- Vector search (AI/embeddings)
- Change tracking (CDC / change tracking)
- WITH (Common Table Expression / CTE)
- Recursive CTE (WITH RECURSIVE)
- JOIN types (INNER/LEFT/RIGHT/FULL/CROSS)
- Window functions (OVER / PARTITION BY)
- GROUP BY, HAVING, ROLLUP/CUBE/GROUPING SETS
- CASE expression (conditional value)
- UNION / UNION ALL / INTERSECT / EXCEPT (MINUS)
- EXISTS / IN / NOT EXISTS (subquery)
- Row limiting / paging (LIMIT/OFFSET, FETCH, ROWNUM, TOP)
- MERGE / UPSERT (update if exists, else insert)
- Return the modified row (RETURNING / OUTPUT)
- LATERAL / CROSS APPLY (row-by-row subquery)
- PIVOT / UNPIVOT (rows↔columns)
- NULL handling (COALESCE/NVL/NULLIF/IS NULL)