sql - CONNECT BY or hierarchical queries in RDBMS other than Oracle

Question

Oracle ships with a very handy feature. You can create hierarchical queries (recursive behaviour) using the following clause:

CONNECT BY [NOCYCLE] {condition [AND condition...]} [START WITH condition]

As documented here:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28286/queries003.htm

I'm wondering, are there any other established RDBMS that support an equivalent or similar syntax? Or can recursive behaviour like this be generically simulated using regular SQL?

A good example that I'd like to be able to simulate is this (taken from the Oracle documentation):

    SELECT LPAD(' ', 2 * (LEVEL-1)) || last_name org_chart, 
           employee_id, manager_id, job_id
      FROM employees
START WITH job_id = 'AD_VP' 
CONNECT BY PRIOR employee_id = manager_id; 

Resulting in:

ORG_CHART          EMPLOYEE_ID MANAGER_ID JOB_ID
------------------ ----------- ---------- ----------
Kochhar                    101        100 AD_VP
  Greenberg                108        101 FI_MGR
    Faviet                 109        108 FI_ACCOUNT
    Chen                   110        108 FI_ACCOUNT
    Sciarra                111        108 FI_ACCOUNT
    Urman                  112        108 FI_ACCOUNT
    Popp                   113        108 FI_ACCOUNT
  Whalen                   200        101 AD_ASST
  Mavris                   203        101 HR_REP
  Baer                     204        101 PR_REP
  Higgins                  205        101 AC_MGR
    Gietz                  206        205 AC_ACCOUNT
De Haan                    102        100 AD_VP
  Hunold                   103        102 IT_PROG
    Ernst                  104        103 IT_PROG
    Austin                 105        103 IT_PROG
    Pataballa              106        103 IT_PROG
    Lorentz                107        103 IT_PROG

The LEVEL pseudo column and the indentation achieved with it is not so important to me

Answer 1

SQL Server uses common table expressions (WITH statement) to achieve the same (see Recursive Queries Using Common Table Expressions).

This kind of query can also be used in Oracle (starting with 11g if I'm not mistaken).

The resulting query is more complex:

WITH emp(employee_id, manager_id, job_id, last_name, lvl)
AS (
    SELECT e.employee_id, e.manager_id, e.job_id, e.last_name, 1 lvl
    FROM employees e
    WHERE job_id = 'AD_VP'
    UNION ALL
    SELECT e.employee_id, e.manager_id, e.job_id, e.last_name, r.lvl + 1 lvl
    FROM employees e
    JOIN emp r ON r.employee_id = e.manager_id
)
SELECT LPAD(' ', 2 * (lvl-1)) || last_name org_chart,
    employee_id, manager_id, job_id
FROM emp;