Oracle Database Reviews

• Security and Scalability
• I have used Oracle technologies for last two decades apart from other similar vendors like MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, etc.

It helped build a strong core application layer

Its a natural choice for any complex enterprise relational system

• Security and Scalability
• I have used Oracle technologies for last two decades apart from other similar vendors like MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, etc.
• Power of Oracle combined with robust Unix platforms like Linux or AIX makes it powerful and secure as compared to MS SQL on Windows 
• IBM DB2 needs indepth technical expertise and lot of workarounds or automation to build a strong solution, MS SQL is on Windows and that makes it not the best choice

Support and Patching.

I found MS SQL Server support more helpful in many cases where in they internally rope in technology experts from different layers rather than pushing back on the clients, something Oracle can incorporate for sure.

Multiple issues, but mostly triggered from lower layers like OS, Network, storage layers.

Oracle GRID is sensitive to underlying network and disk timeouts and node evictions may happen if disk and network systems are not optimized

Oracle systems are highly scalable, Backup and Recovery strategy needs to be tweaked and is not as scalable as core database system. It needs some special attention to meet your RTO

Customer Service:

I would rate it 6/10. Many times the support is not able to solve the problems and they would put you into loops and escalate to their dev team which may take months to come back with a solution. Sometimes the solution never arrives and you are forced to upgrade to higher version.

Technical Support:

I would rate it 7/10.

Enterprise systems for financial institutions hosting both core systems and business support systems. This includes both OLTP and data warehouse databases. 

It has improved my organisation with the stability of its systems. The team is well-versed with the management of Oracle more than any other database. It is flexible, scalable, and a true Enterprise RDBMS.

• High availability using real application clusters.
• Disaster recovery using Oracle Data Guard.
• Scalable storage using Automatic Storage Management.
• Security is watertight. Database Vault is my favourite.

Auditing could be improved, especially granular auditing. The unified audit trail in 12c is great, however its extraction in a highly busy environment is quite a challenge.

Oracle RDBMS is being used for our SAP ERP, analytics, SAP SRM, SAP SCM , SAP BOBJ, and SAP Solman.

It is reliable and well accepted. 

It gives DB consistency, supports disaster recovery (DR), is tunable, and handles large DB sizes.

The compression does not give much value-add or provide performance benefits as was highlighted.

Cloud installations using Oracle are not supported by SAP.

The license cost needs to be optimized. The licensing cost is very high compared to other RDBMS. 

Oracle Database is cloud ready, not only for the software standardization, but also for the scripting. You can install Oracle Database software, patching, and create/configure Oracle databases in silent using scripts. Therefore, you can easily automate everything in cloud.

Performance is the best key value. Oracle Database is suitable for OLTP applications or data warehouse. You can run Oracle Database software on-premise or in the cloud. Also, Oracle provides Exadata, the engineered system designed for Oracle Database, where you can achieve maximum performance.

Upgrade is the most critical phase for the lifecycle of a database. In order to be sure that the migration succeeds, you need to be up-to-date. Therefore, regularly install the patchset and security updates.

No. The most critical error was due to a bug on database policies, so selecting it got the wrong results.

No issues.

I would give technical support a seven out of 10 rating.

As of now, I use different database solutions depending on the use case (for example, MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server).

It is not complex, but you need to be aware of the best practices provided by Oracle. Therefore, I recommend to read the official documentation before starting a new Oracle installation. Also, be informed of the known issues using My Oracle Support.

If it is the first time implementing, contact a partner or an expert in order to install/configure your Oracle Database. This is the best way or think about Oracle PaaS in the Cloud.

Not in my scope.

Most recent involvement was the migration of a large database from a non-relational legacy database requiring redundancy with aggressive recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) for the disaster recovery (DR) environment. We also had a requirement to have the migration completed and the data validated within a single long weekend. 

Significant assistance in tuning both the migration process and the production database was provided by Oracle Consulting Services, which provided excellent and very professional advice.

Switching to Oracle significantly increased stability of the application, and enabled ongoing growth of the application's data. It also provided better insight and diagnostics when data problems were encountered by the application.

RAC clustering allowed us to improve performance and provided additional redundancy. In general, the enterprise-grade features of Oracle are second to none.

In the case noted above, the converted legacy data was stored as XML. The 11gR2 version we converted to stored it as a Character Large OBject (CLOB). The next version of Oracle has a native XML data type, which provides better support for indexing the XML data.

Because of the way the application used the database, we found that two data servers increased performance, but a third one decreased it. This was a limitation based on the way the legacy application configured and used their data and how they did their own locking, which made their lock table a hotspot for the clustering, among other issues.

There was a bit of a learning experience on how to escalate an issue, but once we got through that, the vendor support was really very good.

The previous solution was a non-relational multi-valued database called jBASE.  The database size was exceeding the application vendor's recommended maximum for that database, but their application had the ability to use a number of relational databases with their enterprise features as an alternate data store allowing continued growth.

Initial setup was complex because of the odd way the application used the database, the application vendor's conversion tools, and our stringent requirements.

Implementation was done by a combination of the vendor, the application vendor, and in-house. The vendor teams were exceptionally good.

The ability to continue growing and increased stability were our non-negotiable points.

Be prepared to pay for consulting services, and do not underestimate the time required to find and hire good quality database administrators. Also, carefully evaluate your sizing and performance requirements, involving if you can, both the application vendor and Oracle consultants.

In addition to Oracle, we evaluated SQL Server and DB2.

Do a couple dry runs do thorough testing to ensure that everything will work as expected.

• High availability 
• Performance 

Those are the topmost.

Because we're servicing end clients, I need to have the SLA. The performance is the key point for us. When a customer logs in to the website, it needs to be within a few seconds, SLA. So that's how it's helping us, improved performance and, ultimately, gaining customer satisfaction. 

Right now, the version that have is just one version lower than what's available. I'm looking forward to upgrading to that version, especially the container-based database. That's what I'm looking forward to.

There is always room to improve. New stuff coming in.

It is a very stable product, especially the RAC, node clusters, so if one goes down it's very seamless. You have other nodes backing it up.

It's easy to scale. You can add more memory, more storage. If you need to scale horizontally, you can add one more node. It's a pretty scalable product.

We use it when we have issues. It's pretty good. They have a very good support model. You create a service request and, depending on the priority, they call you back. It's pretty good support.

No, we've been using this one. It's a robust product, very solid; better features. That's why we chose it.

It was complex. It was all set up but it is very complex. Day in, day out, it's very complex work.

The most important criteria for us when selecting a vendor are the support model and their willingness to work with us.

I would definitely encourage checking out this solution. Work with Oracle and you'll find out whether you can use it. They're pretty good at coming to your site and giving demos and all that kind of stuff.

The best thing about Oracle Database is its being a relational database. There is no other database that can meet the benefits it provides. The data retrieval and access are the main keys, the best features within Oracle.

I'm a technical guy so how I look at data is, it needs to be accessed quickly, preserved safe and secure. Basically, the product should give you peace of mind within the corporation. There shouldn't be any worries as such.

It facilitates a lot of security benefits.

The only major thing that we see right now is the downtime. Whenever there is an upgrade, whenever there is planned, scheduled maintenance, the downtime could be a huge impact for the business itself. That is where other companies are trying to compete, in terms of providing solutions, to avoid the downtime or minimize it.

There aren't really stability issues. Oracle does have a physical real application cluster, RAC. It does minimize the downtime.

It's absolutely scalable. The 12c version is way more scalable than how it was in the 11g version. It does solve that problem.

I'm the one who resolves the tickets. We don't use tech support.

I'm pretty new to working here at PayPal. But they have had Oracle for so many years. And so many companies that I've worked for in the past, like Best Buy, Cargill, Cisco, all these companies have Oracle at a very large scale.

Even though it is really expensive compared to other databases, like SQL and other non-SQL databases out there, Oracle has been like a monopoly. They are very high, premium. Still, consumers want to use it because it meets customers' needs. 

It's pretty simple to use. You pretty much find all the technical stuff online even if you are a newbie, for you to get up to speed. It just takes your willingness to learn and understand it.

Row Locking, which is probably the reason why Oracle is number one.

Oracle database is more reliable than anything else.

From my point of view as a DBA, the administration tools, especially the database administration tools and the developer tools. They are still behind compared to Toad or anything else.

It's pretty stable.

In terms of scaling, I haven't seen any issues. I don't really like RAC. From our experience, the single instance was better for us than the RAC. We do have RAC and the single instance, but we are actually moving our RAC machines to the single instance because the overhead by direct was not really acceptable. One of the main reasons was because now you have to use ASM, and we didn't find ASM very efficient.

It's probably the worst tech support that any company has, compared to anything that I have worked with.

It's a nightmare if I have to open a service request. I opened a simple service request with a question about two months ago. I found the workaround, but the service request is still open. No one ever even bothered to answer anything, and it was level-2.

Go through the concepts. Once when you get the concepts, then you can easily figure it out. Everything is available, but you have to know what you are doing with the database otherwise you can screw up very badly.