title: CONNECT BY or hierarchical queries in RDBMS other than Oracle
body: <p>Oracle ships with a very handy feature. You can create hierarchical queries (recursive behaviour) using the following clause:</p>
  
  <pre><code>CONNECT BY [NOCYCLE] {condition [AND condition...]} [START WITH condition]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As documented here:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28286/queries003.htm" rel="noreferrer">http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28286/queries003.htm</a></p>
  
  <p>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?</p>
  
  <p>A good example that I'd like to be able to simulate is this (taken from the Oracle documentation):</p>
  
  <pre><code>    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; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Resulting in:</p>
  
  <pre><code>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
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The <code>LEVEL</code> pseudo column and the indentation achieved with it is not so important to me</p>