What is our primary use case?
It is deployed on AWS Cloud, but it is an IaaS setup, not the PaaS one.
We are using or leveraging Oracle DB for storing the transaction related details. Along with that we are heavily relying on the CCQ and setup that Oracle provides. They were sending a notification for any changes or transactional log audit purposes that we are using.
What is most valuable?
The features that I have found most valuable are things like cluster setup and RAC One. We are using the main CQN and third party plugin support right now. We are relying on different languages support that we are getting from the Oracle side. It is one of the major areas in which Oracle excels compared to other databases.
What needs improvement?
In terms of what could be improved vis-à-vis our use cases and requirements, there is nothing. Nonetheless, we are trying to move to other companies because of the licensing cost that we're incurring on a monthly basis. Other than that we are not seeing any performance issues or require additional add-ons based on our use cases.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Oracle Database for around four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It requires patching that we need to do manually from our end. To use the patches released from the Oracle side requires maintenance.
We have a dedicated team of DBA's that took care of the maintenance and dispatching. There are times reserved for that purpose, and during that time whenever a business requirement is very low or there is less load on the DB, that is when we do it.
It is quite stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The RAC One feature that I mentioned is one of the highlights of Oracle. We're using that for scalability and management. If we're increasing we can easily plug the nodes into the DB and we can distribute the load. It's not a problem.
Right now we are creating these transaction logs from different DBs that we have in place so it's not directly any application or anyone in these dealings. ETL jobs are defined and in place so that we can extract and dump the logs into the Oracle DB.
We have a team of administrators working on it.
How are customer service and technical support?
Our team used to do it without any kind of technical challenges. Anything which we are not able to solve from our end our DBA team used to reach out to them.
We have a separate team who is doing all the tickets and stuff.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is a bit complex because we need to define rules and permissions for each and every user's perspective. The initial setup took us a bit to put everything in place.
What about the implementation team?
We were getting help from the Oracle DBA support when we we set up Oracle.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Right now we are paying per license to Oracle and for whatever additional features we are leveraging. For that we need to pay extra on top of the license.
There are a lot of additional costs. That is the reason we are only leveraging for transactional related purposes, so that we do not spend so much on doing the same thing on Oracle. That is the reason we are looking for open source databases now.
What other advice do I have?
As I mentioned previously, as per our use cases, the features that Oracle is currently providing are more than enough. We haven't seen any new features that should be included because all the features that we need to support our business requirements are there.
Oracle is a great DB. If you very heavily rely on it for very business-critical data and certain scaling is required or heavy requirements from the technology perspective, I would say Oracle is one of the best DB's. But for that you need to pay a heavy amount for the licensing costs. Everything is included in the package, but apart from a few additional features we also need to pay extra.
On a scale of one to ten, I would give Oracle Database a 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.