I for one like the XQL files, as I like the separation of the query from the TCL code. It just makes things cleaner and easier to maintain. I personally do not want to see the practice of using XQL files dropped.
As for Oracle, I had a painful experience installing oracle 8 on linux 4 years ago. I installed it, but I haven't used Oracle since. I haven't come across many clients that prefer Oracle over PostgreSQL, so I've been lucky. :)
