http://www.baycongroup.com/tocsql.htm start sqlplus select * from tab; -- display the tables select FIELD1,FIELD2,FIELD3 from TABLE where FIELD3 between 1 and 5 order by FIELD3 DESC; update TABLE set FIELD1='new value',FIELD2='new value' where FIELD3='14' and FIELD5 begins with 'Y'; commit work; delete from TABLE where FIELD1 <> FIELD3; delete from TABLE where FIELD1 like '_eff%'; commit work; MYSQL: alter table TABLE change COLUMN_NAME COLUMN_NAME varchar2(1000); Oracle: alter table TABLE modify (COLUMN_NAME varchar2(1000)); Oracle: alter table TABLE modify COLUMN_NAME varchar2(1000); Note: do not resize less than largest element! backups: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/mysqldump.html mysqldump -uUSER -pPASS DBNAME | gzip -c > db.bak.gz