Oracle Database Reviews

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.

The most important features are container and pluggable database. Now we have more control on the resource level, resource planning, where we can segregate our application based on the pluggable database and utilize the resources better.

The hardware cost and the maintenance cost, because we don't need to buy multiple servers. We don't need to engage so many DBAs. Instead we can put multiple databases in one container database.

Stability features should be there. And the performance, we are not expecting better performance as of now. They must include bug fixes and release a better version of their 12c Database.

It is pretty stable, but since it's only the very first version they released, I would say probably they're going to fix it in release 2.

It scales well so far, no issues at all, but some of the advanced features are pretty expensive, especially on engineered systems like Exadata.

We are getting good results for service requests, but sometimes we see too much delay. Sometimes we see their investigation is going in the wrong direction. They have to improve a bit in order to provide support. 

For example, I have three or four service requests going on with Oracle, and I have seen so many delays, and asking unnecessary questions, which I would not have expected from Oracle.

Upgrading is not an issue. As long as our application is supporting the upgrade. We can upgrade from 11g to 12c without any issues. 

But we have seen issues where we are upgrading our databases from 8i or 9i to 12c. Those versions are still not very compatible with 12c.

We have been with Oracle Database for a long time. Our products are stable on Oracle Database except some performance issues.

My advice is to check the application side, what applications they are going to attach to Oracle Database. Make sure the applications are fully compatible with the Oracle Database.

• Reliability of the database
• High availability

It is good as it is. I've seen the product evolve over a period of time so it is great as it stands right now.

There's always hope for improvement because it's getting bulkier and bulkier. I wish that it would get a little smaller, smaller inside the footprint.

The only other thing I can think of is, perhaps, a voice control command.

It's always been stable and we believe it will continue to be stable.

In my organization we don't have the need for scalability as much because we are a fixed size. We grow very organically so scalability is not an issue for us.

Absolutely, support is huge for us, to be able to get the best quality support. They are pretty reliable. We have good Oracle support, direct Oracle support. OTN (Oracle Technology Network) we use them a lot, so Oracle support and the online, those two.

In terms of getting to the right person, sometimes it's a hit or a miss but mostly, eventually, it works out.

No, this was the first solution that was implemented. It has stood the test of time, always a good thing.

It's straightforward.

When it comes to choosing to work with a vendor we look for the value proposition. Price to performance, the ratio, that is the biggest thing to look at.

Oracle Database is value for money.

Choose the vendor, horses for the courses. Choose the right vendor and just move forward.

Ease of the database. 

I can't think of anything to improve the database features.

More than 12 years.

Stable, absolutely.

It's scalable, it will meet the needs of our company, moving forward.

I had some issues that were resolved by the Oracle support team. There was an issue that I reported myself and the response time was adequate, within expectations. Eighty percent positive.

I don't know. From the time I was employed here it was already installed and working and up and running.

At first, when I was in the learning stage it was a bit difficult to install with Linux or Unix in the environment. Only with Windows can you can install it using a wizard. 

You should have some knowledge, to be familiar with it, the product for installing and plan managing. It was not easy.

We were using Oracle Streams, that is deprecated right now. Before we changed it to Oracle GoldenGate we were just using Streams.

I recommend this product. It's stable, advanced, I think it's the number-one database.

• It's a leading relational database brand; that makes it valuable
• There's a good amount of knowledge on the market
• Availability of skills
• It's quite a mature product
• Very advanced now
• Market leader.

It is already a market leader. The latest comparison to products like SAP HANA, and in-memory computing, and container computing, container-based database structures; these are the areas where I think there is good competition.

I've been using it about 20, 25 years.

It's a very stable solution. You have to configure it to your requirements. It's one of the leading databases. You can have a mission-critical database system to make it available 24/7.

We have 24/7 platforms, from development databases to mission critical databases, they all run on Oracle.

Very scalable.

Good. Their normal ticketing system, their incident management system is quite responsive. All their large accounts have a technical Account Manager. You have your OCI, your Oracle Customer Identifier. Using your OCI, customers can put in their tickets, incidents.

I would recommend it