I wasn't familiar with this operator in Oracle (and many others, for that matter). Here's what I found on thier site:

SELECT RPAD( ' ', LEVEL * 5 ) || Name FROM Universe 

      CONNECT BY PRIOR Name = Parent START WITH Parent IS NULL; 

      

     World 

        Europe 

                England 

                Germany 

                The Netherlands 

        Asia 

                Japan 

                China 

        America 

                United States 

                Mexico 

        Africa 

                Egypt 

                Morocco 

I am not aware of any intrinsic SQL Server fucntionality to handle hierarchical data in this fashion; it would normally be done through a series of joins.

When you execute this sql in Oracle, how would you go about walking the tree?