Oracle Database as a Service Reviews

We primarily are using the solution for clients who want to migrate their applications. We have an on-premises version for testing to see how that would work.

The most valuable aspects of the solution are the general database system resilience and security.

The improvements we require are mostly regarding the documentation and compatibility with other systems or with other non-Oracle technologies. 

Documentation is difficult to find. Since we're experienced with Oracle technology, we have also found many errors in it. Not everything is 100% accurate.

The solution should add functionalities, like database system functions, to speed up the query processing type. Any sort of functions or commands that would give you a faster result would be a welcome improvement. Microsoft Azure, for example, has some building functionalities to fetch big chunks of data and in a very fast way. I haven't seen a similar feature from Oracle. 

Technical support is not very good. Oracle's attitude toward customers, with increasing prices and a general lack of recognition of other technologies, is not ideal.

The level of difficulty in the initial setup varies. Sometimes it's very straightforward, but sometimes it is not. 60% of the time it's pretty straightforward.

Sometimes, for example, we might have previously installed the database in the same environment and there were some dependencies left which damaged the next installation because it was not a fresh install. If you want to uninstall the database, the cleaning of the database and everything associated with it gets a bit tricky. There is no automated process for that.

Deployment is quite fast. You can probably manage a deployment in an hour or less.

We're an integrator. We implement the solution for our clients.

We use the on-premises deployment model. We're currently experimenting with Oracle at the moment.

Currently, customers are looking for and experimenting with various databases. The clients that I've talked to have asked about MySQL or Amazon Aurora Database as well Microsoft Secret Server.

In terms of Oracle, what I've heard from some clients was that the cloud database was a disappointment for them compared to the on-premise database. Some of them were regretful about doing that sort of migration. They told me they were over-promised, and the cloud database didn't deliver. The on-premise databases are quite solid, however. They are very good.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

I'm personally not happy with Oracle, but from a technical standpoint, they have a very solid product.

We primarily use this solution for business applications. I was working for a company and they provided software as a service. We were serving applications to our customers.

For example, we were working locally on a system using Oracle. Then another company would need access to a different application and they would come to us to supply it. As a developer, I was using this solution to develop delivery systems principally as a convenience for our customers.

It does more of what a company like ours needs because it is a product that knows the business of data and data management.

The feature that was most valuable to me in this product — it will be different for different types of users — is that I could develop all the logic inside the database itself. There were no additional integrations.

The solution would also help manage the traffic on the network.

I don't believe that any product is a perfect solution. I believe that each product has some minor disadvantage about which customers need to be able ready to work with or workaround. It may not be the fault of the product but lack of compatibility, the preferences of the user or lack of knowledge of existing features. I think these can all be the case in not maximizing what Oracle already has.

Because of my preference for and knowledge of Toad and the way I work with Oracle, I am not up to date on all of the tools included in this product. But I think if we have all of the features needed as developers already in the product, Oracle will be much better. For example, something very important for all developers that could already be available now in Oracle products is weighting the data. This is a very important technical concern for data centers.

The code that developers use is built up in some instructions, so I need to understand how each instruction is executed and how the current state of the code or data application is affecting the transactions. I found that this type of analysis was difficult in Oracle itself, so I used another product — like Toad — that would give me the ability to debug all the code instruction by instruction to really understand what is going on. It's quite an important feature. If it is available in Oracle now it is not very good or well described. This is a problem that needs a solution.

If it is already there and the vendor does not know about it or understand it, I think there is a big issue. The difference is that to get the most out of the technology, the developers really need to know about the new features and how to find and use them. This is something about Oracle that I think is not very good.

Along with that idea, I think that Oracle might do a little bit improve their interface as it is not very user-friendly and I have heard other developers say similar things. I didn't use myself because it would not help me as much or as quickly as other products to develop functions and to develop other features like reporting. I would have to learn a whole different way.

The solution has good integration with the hardware and it is a stable product.

As a transactional database, I think this is quite a scalable product in a variety of ways. 

Any time I have had the need to use the technical support, it was at least very good but mostly it was excellent.

I previously used Microsoft and if you compare Oracle to Microsoft SQL server, I believe Oracle is so much better than Microsoft SQL Server that they are not comparable. So, I obviously prefer working with the Oracle product. The reason for the difference is probably that Oracle is basically a database company and they focus on this aspect of their business. Microsoft, having many products, is not so focused on this competition with Oracle and they are more focused on Microsoft NET Frameworks and Microsoft Office. Oracle itself has many products right now, but all of them are database products. This concentration is why Oracle is number one in transactional databases.

I am not the one who would be responsible for these installations alone. I would be doing the development. As it requires a team and customizations, I think it has to be considered somewhat complex to set up if you look at the whole picture. It is not as easy as starting an executable and waiting for it to finish running.

We are a SaaS (Software as a Service) house, so we do our own installation, monitoring, and management.

We are a value add software as a service house so we are not really paying the cost of the licenses, the customer is the one who pays month-to-month. The customer is paying the money for their Oracle database in our case. We only use the product for development and testing to be able to deliver the services.

For the customer, our service becomes an advantage. So the price may seem high, but for them, it is reasonable and not so high as it could cost them much more to deploy separately. The price corresponds to the quality of the product and services they receive in return.

We use the on-premises solution because the customer has to have their own environment. In our case, for our clients, that's one of the big advantages.

A potential issue might be getting used to the Oracle interface. Personally, I didn't use the interface provided by Oracle. In that way, the interface was not a problem for me because I used to use a third-party application like Toad that maybe more people are already familiar with and I think is easy for me to use already.

We are using the same server software application. I don't know if Oracle provided database software and SQL developer or not. But for myself, I needed an application to develop the features and functions on the Oracle Database.

While I prefer and recommend Oracle, many other factors are involved in making decisions. If all the factors are the same and there are no limitations for the cost or other issues for adopting Oracle compared with other products, I think Oracle would always be a better choice.  

A lesson I learned is that you have to always verify the virtual data when you are acting as a software as a service house for the customer. Oracle is part of our winning team. It may not be the only product that we use to achieve the result.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a seven to eight depending a little on how you use it. For us, it is an eight because it is very good at what it does and we use other tools to make it do what we want it to do. We don't fight with the one product to try and make it do everything.

We usually use the on-premise version, but we have also implemented it on the cloud in three or four projects.

Our primary use case is probably with regards to the ease of management. It actually reduces the cost of the databases. Also, the storage cases we are dealing with are different. It is not just the client. We also use Database as a Service.

it's save a lot of time, there are no need for example to senior DBA to manage the database which is saved money include to that, this is what we touch in the company.

One of the key features is Oracle Database as a Service. We chose to implement it as a service, which provides good performance, for example. Flexibility and other features let us implement database research with the SQL team range of features also.

You can meet your principle DevOps needs for scaling.

The direct scaling is a feature that has room for improvement. I would like to see virtual management machines that can scale storage well with zero downtime. The backup option and patching would then be much easier to do.

I would also like to implement CDI with Database as a Service.

There is also room for improvement with regards to scalability and availability. The maintenance is also an issue. When Oracle does maintenance, you need to be prepared because everything will be down.

It's very good. It helps make the DBA work much easier, to be honest with you. The features from Oracle are amazing and it adapts multiple delivery models for the database itself.

You can scale everything fine with this solution.

We only need one person for deployment and one for maintenance.

The initial setup was straightforward. You don't actually have to deploy anything in Oracle Database as a Service. It's pretty easy. There is no special requirement to work with the team or anything.

Deployment time depends on the solution you choose because you have virtual machine builds and terminals. If it is a terminal, for example, it will take you between two or three minutes. While the virtual machine will need between 15 and 40 minutes.

The price depends on the solution you choose: standard, enterprise, or high performance. For example, enterprise can start between 0.4 an hour up to 1,800.

Additional fees also depend on what package you choose. Your fees will be different if you choose the standard, enterprise, high performance, or extreme package. You will pay in relation to what option you ask for.

The price is very good if you compare it to other databases.

Be aware that migration actually takes some time. Also, keep in mind what your data size is. If you are going to have a huge database size, just migrate to Database as a Service.

I would rate this as nine out of ten.

We use this solution for multiple databases.

I have written Oracle scripts for operational databases and uploading databases.

Our environment includes a Red Hat server with two storage devices for high availability. 

I have been able to assist people with technical support remotely.

This solution is very stable, easy to use, and scales quickly. When we want more information on something that we are using, it is easy to find related topics on the internet.

We use the automated system for creating tables.

The security system is very good.

When we troubleshoot, there are many tools that we need to use. One example is having to look at the system logs. The troubleshooting process should be improved so that we can resolve errors faster. 

Oracle demands a lot of memory and you need to have a strong machine.

In the next release, I would like to see a framework for memory management.

Oracle databases are stable. It is a very dependable application.

Oracle has many strong features and tools. There are many options and possibilities.

Technical support for this solution is good.

I have used MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server, and there is no comparison to Oracle. 

I simply followed the instructions on the Oracle website.

The deployment took several months because we have a complex architecture with six thousand servers.

I don't use the management features because I don't work with the GUI. I prefer to use the command line.

Oracle is a very good solution that I would recommend. It is strong software with good support and documentation available.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The stability and the format and the speed of the database are very good. 

Some of the technical features could be improved. They have a problem with some of the object types. I think this is one of the issues which is needed to be improved. If they could implement a managing tool that is better than the one they have now, that would be an improvement.

The solution is very stable.

Scalability is very easy. If you want to, you can have it scale onto two or three servers, racks, or whatever you want. It's easy.

Technical support is not bad. It's not like Microsoft support. With Microsoft support, you can search for answers online and you will find a lot of articles that help with problem-solving. With Oracle, if you open a ticket for technical assistance Oracle's very good and they will help you.

The initial setup is straightforward. Even if you're not technical, it's possible to set it up.

I didn't look at any other solutions.

I use some other databases, like Microsoft and MySQL, but they don't have the same performance as Oracle.

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

The primary use is the leverage DBaaS (Database as a Service) using the Oracle Cloud solution without having to build the database a step at a time.  Getting a pre-built Oracle database can be beneficial for testing for functionality, new development, but mostly the ability to quickly build different sizes of Oracle systems without a large effort.  The ability to resize things is also an advantage over other cloud solutions.  There is also an Autonomous Database.

I think some of the biggest benefits is if there's a consolidation potential, or putting things up in the cloud where I can consolidate many databases into one. Also a location potential is helpful; if I have customers in Germany and China and in the U.S. but my IT is located in Chicago, I could go to the Oracle Cloud and now maybe I can put replicas using Oracle's multi-tenant database. The cloud makes this a lot easier to actually do a clone of a pluggable database, but I could just take that pluggable database and clone it to China. I can clone it to Germany and then I could have one here in the United States. The data is closer to the person. There's also EU privacy laws that I have to keep and it makes it a lot easier to secure things in one location as well. Careful though, some laws require you to take responsibility for what you put in the cloud.  We also benchmarked Oracle ADW vs. AWS Redshift & Oracle was much faster.

Being able to go to go to the website: cloud.oracle.com/tryit and get $300+ in free trial credits is a great way to explore the technology (you can also go to cloud.oracle.com/database to just try database as a service (DBaaS). The cloud is something accelerates efforts to interface with Big Data and IOT, but it takes an educated buyer to implement the right pieces at the right time. The cloud gives people the ability to leverage big data from non-Oracle sources including Hadoop and Hive, quickly deploy a development test or simple application, and to leverage the interfaces to other companies and to use mobile apps. I think the downside is it's causing people pain as it compresses how fast they need to learn about it and effectively move the parts of their system that are better suited in the cloud. I think that's the biggest issue right now. Some of the features that are out there for database as a service on the cloud, if you want to have an encrypted backup in the cloud or a test database, it's nice to have a backup that's offsite or a system where you can test new features. Are you going to put your backup in a lock-box at the local bank or are you going to put it on some other cloud? With Oracle, you can send it with RMAN encrypted backup straight to the Oracle Cloud and it's there when you need it. If you had to fail-over for some reason when you use Oracle Cloud, and you have an Exadata in-house, Oracle has an Exadata in the cloud that you could fail right over to (this allows either a CAPEX or OPEX financial event). Maybe you have some big data where you don't have enough servers and you know exactly what you want hardware wise, well, you're familiar with that Exadata performance so you know exactly what you're going to get in the cloud since the hardware is similar to what you have on-site.

Features that people want the most are already there. One of them is Oracle In-Memory which allows you to put things in a columnar data store in memory with Oracle's 12c (12.1.0.2+). You could have an in-memory database. You could have columnar data, which is compressed and in-memory (in the in-memory column store) or if you're doing transactional data, it's in the buffer cache (memory) so it's very fast to do that transactions. It's a different memory area altogether. When I look at the cloud, you'll need In-Memory more, because you're going to be dealing with larger volumes of data. The second feature that helps is multi-tenancy; Oracle already has this as of 12c Release 1. It is the ability to clone and move things around and maybe do an exchange partition (PDB - Pluggable Database) with one of your vendors or one of your customers out there (given security needs are met). Non-PDBs (or not using multi-tenancy is being deprecated).  Leveraging and testing new features of 12.2 is also beneficial.  Oracle 18c will be beneficial with Snapshot Carousel, PDB switchover,  In-Memory External Tables and Polymorphic Tables.

I think the way that Oracle and other vendors can move people quicker to the cloud is by educating people on the capabilities of the cloud and some of the benefits of the cloud. I think as customers and vendors out there and partners of Oracle look at providing solutions for the cloud, I think people will be more likely to go there, but what I think right now is the biggest hesitancy is there are a lot of other cloud providers don't have any of the features Oracle has. Oracle must let people know that if you have on-site Exadata, now you can have Exadata in the cloud. Easy to move. You've got a lot of data you want to archive? You can move it to a slower, larger server or a faster, smaller server depending on what you want to do. Just the capabilities that they have in-house or in the cloud. Some cost more than others, so effective planning is one big key to success. The cloud is gaining momentum, but the key to success is evaluating it fully and using appropriately.

No.

I did an estimate of all the servers that are out there and Google is obviously very large. Amazon Web Services is very large but if you take Oracle's cloud, which is over 1 exabyte now and then you take the compression that you can do with Oracle, it's actually, probably the largest cloud that's out there right now (many Exabytes). From a scalability standpoint, as big as the world is, as big as you can think, that's how large you can scale your applications.

Oracle's technical support has almost every answer just by searching their support system. I always find what I'm looking for and more.

I think everybody knows that they need to move from on-premise to the cloud. They know the cloud is what's coming next. They know it's way to quickly interface with social media with Big Data very quickly. I think their hesitancy is: where does it fit? Give us the opportunity to do a hybrid cloud so that our staff can be up to date on exactly how this works and I think then they'll move there faster. There are other clouds with MANY hidden costs.  Please hire an expert to consult when evaluating hidden costs on the cloud.  Viscosity North America pays particular attention to these hidden costs.  Viscosity also has an Oracle vs. AWS whitepaper on our website.

I thought it was very easy to setup database as a service (within hours - the second one will take minutes) for testing new features and familiarizing yourself with the flow of things.

We brought a customer that was not in the cloud, all on premise and we put their EBS finances into the Oracle cloud and all their manufacturing was still on site. They were multi-currency. They were multi-country. Initially there was a lot of education that needed to happen. The more education you put forth at the beginning edge of that project, the more likely you're going to be successful in the middle of that project, but cloud projects tend to be shorter in duration and then when you get to the end of that, there's a lot of questions on things that people could do that they couldn't do before they got to the cloud. The 'what ifs' we'll say. What if I could extend my data to all these data sources with big data? Well, they never asked that before because they never could do it before. Now that they're in the cloud, their whole world opens up to what the capabilities are for their company itself. Some of those discussions are interesting after the fact.

It really depends how this is measured.

There are different prices for different architectures - plan wisely and ensure that you look at all the pluses/minuses of each provider!

Some of the criteria for when you're evaluating a cloud, to me, number one is cost, but after that it's SLA (Service Level Agreement - from the cloud provider). Is my data going to be there? Consider a credit card company. They have seven seconds until they're paying some other company because they didn't do the transaction fast enough. Usually it takes them one second to approve your transaction so time and speed is probably the most important thing.

What are some of the criteria people should be looking at? First of all is SLA. Will it be up? The second isL is it going to be on hardware and software that I'm used to? I have a tech staff of 100 people, are they going to be able to do their job when that data's in the cloud? Just being familiar with things. Can it scale? Is it large enough?

Read my 12cR2 book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Oracle-...

How would Oracle rate on a scale of 1 to 10 with cloud solution? I think it depends absolutely on which Oracle cloud solution it is. Some are 10 and some are lower. It depends which architecture you evaluate.

Many people are looking at it now. The main key is get educated. Understand what's out there. I did three sessions at Oracle OpenWorld and Java World in 2017, all of them have cloud. I will do many at Collaborate earlier this year (April 2018) and all of them will have cloud. Why? Because I know it's important and where many things are going to some degree. Whether people are using the 12c database, 18c database, that's one of my talks, I know it's important to be ready for the cloud (the 11g database is also available on the cloud). How you would migrate each database and what multi-tenant does to assist you in that process is an important feature of Oracle. I also have regular sessions on the Internet of Things (IOT) which talks about all these devices that are going to be integrated with your database and big data and obviously cloud plays perfectly to that one.

The primary use case is transaction services of the bank. The performance is amazing. It is very good for the all-flash disk.

• More SLAs for the clients; better performance in our transactions for clients.
• Improves client satisfaction by decreasing their problems.

• The performance
• The opportunity for recovery

I would like to see a better dashboard for the storage. It need to be more complete overall. At the moment, it is basic. 

The stability is very good. There have been no problems.

The scalability is good. There have been no problems.

We have had no issues contacting technical support. We use the Chilean and US support offices, and they respond quickly.

We had Hitachi storage, but the performance and the support were very bad.

The initial setup was easy.

We looked at Dell storage, but we chose Oracle due to its performance, security, and scalability.

I would recommend the solution. It is quite complete and very good.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Recommendations
• Performance
• Stability.

Not only does it provide a mature, reliable solution for DR. It also helps if application owners need to look into data which is a couple of hours old, using Flashback Database on the standby database.

Data Guard, because it’s the best solution for Disaster Recovery.

The licensing is a nightmare. Tons of options which need to be licensed individually, and no real offering for VMware or other Hypervisors.

And my favorite option – Multitenant – should be available for some pluggable databases in all editions without any fee.

No stability issues at all.

RAC is not a real scalability solution, so instead of scaling out I prefer to scale up.

Very poor.

I have always used Oracle Database.

Back in the early 90s, set up was difficult. But now, it’s straightforward using the graphical interfaces. But there is indeed room for improvement. An 8GB download for software is far too big. Nowadays it should be possible to simply use RPM packages on Linux/Unix.

There should be a standard way to license the database in a virtual environment (e.g. VMware) and there should be a low-end version (like Standard Edition One) again.

Before starting to look for the high-end solution (Enterprise Edition) you should consider using Standard Edition Two. There is a great chance that it will be sufficient, and gaps can be filled with third-party products like Dbvisit Standby for Distaster Recovery.