Oracle Database Reviews

This is used as the main core for our financial service and is running on an Exadata server.

Oracle enables us to handle more than a million daily transactions.

The most valuable features are the Oracle Data Guard and Transportable Tablespaces. These features are useful when you need data protection and in case you need to move data around quickly.

The price tag is very high and most cannot afford it.

I have been using Oracle for ten years.

The feature I find most valuable about this solution is reliability. Whenever there was a problem, like hardware that failed, the data was still okay and not corrupted and that is very important for us. 

I am also really impressed by the scalability of this product. For example, whenever we need to add new space, Oracle makes it easy to extend and increase our performance. We don't have any corruption issues and we can add new space and without having to restart our database. 

I would like to see an improvement in the upgrade process. Sometimes it's very complicated to upgrade from one version to another. We are currently running the Oracle version 12 and we may need to upgrade in the future. These upgrades are not very simple and should be made more user-friendly.

If it could be more affordable, it would be a plus. Because the product is very expensive.

The stability of Oracle is absolutely perfect. We've had no problems since we started using it in 1995. One time we had power problems and we had to restart the server. The data was automatically corrected and reconstructed, without any problem at all.

Oracle is very scalable. We have no issues with that, even though we have a large database. We currently have about a hundred users.

Oracle has a support portal where you can get help and where they issue you a support ticket. It is, however, expensive.

We are using Oracle mostly for digital business data. But we are also running Microsoft SQL, mostly for simpler, small applications. Microsoft SQL is also a good database and our company's second alternative for SQL data storage. As a second option and for minor applications, we use open source, PostgreSQL or MySQL. 

The initial setup was really complicated and complex. We always use our partner for installation and then we prepare and analyze install scenarios. Then we go through the approval process and start with the installation. I believe the process is complex and complicated when you have a large database. For smaller users, it will be simple, but for most production data, this process is rather complicated. 

Oracle is expensive, but very good. You get quality for the price you pay.

The enterprise Oracle Manager is very good. It is an expensive solution, so I will rate this product a nine out of ten.

It's stable, scalable, transportable – all of that combined together; it's a reliable platform; more knowledge base; and more pertinent support.

I think Oracle could provide some more user-friendly, front-end toolsets. Even though it's for techies, that would be nice. I know they have some, but those are all licensed products.

I have been using Oracle Database for 20 years; a long time; since college.

Knock on wood, there hasn’t been any downtime to the point that is noticeable, but we do plan downtime to do stuff; it has seldom choked up on us.

I think it will meet our company’s needs going forward; so far, looking good. 12c has more promise and cloud is the next frontier. Being in healthcare, just being cautious, but I think there are signs they are getting ready to move to the cloud; gradually, not 100%.

Technical support is good. It should be more direct, but now, it's a little indirect. I still rate them high. When I need them, I can demand and they'll respond. Sometimes, the challenge is the time zone. You have to be careful when you're opening a case; how to make sure you have the right people in the right time zone.

This product came in before I joined my current company. I think it was influenced by their ERP system which they brought over in 1998. Lawson recommended running on Oracle.

Setup is straightforward, but it requires some knowledge. Otherwise, it will turn out to be complex. It's not like anyone can do it. You have to know what you're doing. That involves training and knowledge transfer.

Everything is good but pricing-wise, it's still struggling with that. It's very difficult to justify their costs sometimes in the board room.

We also use SQL Server, MySQL, and a little bit of MongoDB.

I would recommend the products I have experience with. I don't just say yes or no, or give just one or two options; I give you a bit more. I recommend the product I have, Oracle RDBMS Suite. I think they're still trustworthy, if not more.

When I select working with a vendor like Oracle, I look for the sum of their accomplishments. I don't really go for companies because they have been in business for 50 years. I also look for agility; what they bring; transparency; the offering, of course; what they're bringing in and the ideas behind it. Is it going to be sustainable for five years or more? Is it going to diversify itself across the industry? I rate thsee factors high.

It's the only database you can operate at a very high professional level and that offers what the customers need from the product, ACID.

It's a crucial and critical part of our everyday business. That's what it does.

Real zero-downtime patching, that's what I want.

When you have a fallback system with RAC and Data Guard, the autonomous help framework could support it, but collecting the logs and reading the logs is still a nightmare. Improving this would be very good. The way Oracle does it today is OK, with in-memory options, with NoSQL database integrated and so on, but it could be a really good feature for the future.

We have scaled it, but not to a very high extent.

I think as we start to get into the IT business more and more, we will see how we need it. We are now operating an Oracle RAC system, so we can scale when required.

Technical support is kind of different because at some point, you reach the point where you can't proceed any further with stand-up processes. You need to have context and background information about the company. We're lucky that we can get in touch directly with the development team. We get help there.

Normally we have very complex problems when we have them. When we communicate with them using the standard channels, it does not fit. But, as I’ve mentioned, we have the direct line of communication with the development.

It's like, how do you decide that you need electricity at home? It’s a given requirement from the business. We've been working with Oracle for many, many years and using the product for many, many versions.

We did the initial setup ourselves. We have a huge framework in which we did the complete setup. We installed the clusters. It was not straightforward. For such as huge company like ours, it’s not straightforward. There are too many management processes around and too many specialties in the company.

We do not have any other vendors on a shortlist at this time.

We have three flavors of relational databases: MS SQL, Oracle, and MySQL. MySQL should fit the open-source aspect, and then we have two huge relational databases. Therefore, MS SQL is more for the smaller deployment and Oracle is for the huge deployments. SAP release 3 runs on Oracle, too. It was in the company. We didn't decide to use Oracle or not. It was there.

We just offer it to our customers and they choose. The mission-critical stuff runs on Oracle.

It's very professional and there are good structures implemented there. When you are willing to pay, you can get everything. Basically, what you pay for with Oracle is the maturity of the product, and that is something you can rely on.

Know how Oracle works. They say it's always been like that: you first sell, then you fulfill. You have to know that and that it's okay. You have to know that the new features will not work immediately.

When we're looking at a vendor like Oracle, we look at two areas. One is the technical part and the other is that it's a huge company. When we have problems, there is a huge organization behind it that can support it. We have a lot of ways to escalate issues. We look for a really huge company with a lot of people with whom we can get in contact. When we go to open-source projects or to smaller projects and we have problems, it's not as easy. Communicating with Oracle is easier to manage.

The most valuable feature is the searching; it takes less time to search.

The security is also valuable.

Many organizations in my country use Oracle, so it's for us to communicate between our systems and other systems. We don't need, for example, some behind-the-scenes or in-between integration, or some other integration program.

I have a problem with Windows. It doesn't work so well; it's difficult. It's not as easy as SQL Server. For example, if I want to publish, or if I want my clients to work with Oracle database, I need to install Oracle clients. It's annoying. It's for security.

Sometimes I have difficulty with its Arabic support. It doesn't work so well in Arabic, in all of the versions we use. We need to go to the Analyze link to choose Arabic.

It goes down sometimes; sometimes it is not as stable. It is 90% stable, 10% unstable.

It is scalable; it is better.

We have not used technical support.

Sometimes when we run into difficulties, I have found some answers by searching on the web.

Other teams perform the initial setup. It goes smoothly but we do have problems, as I’ve mentioned; sometimes we have difficulty with Windows. We need to install it many times. Sometimes, we need to reformat the PCs, and reinstall Windows.

Determine how the Oracle database will be used in your organization. For example, if you want to build a new system, and you want your system to connect with another system, to another organization, you must use Oracle, because the other organization uses Oracle, and it is easy to communicate with it.

From a storage and memory perspective, 11g is great. We also tried to install 12c on our machines, but we weren't happy about it because there were two version of it and we weren't ready to use the required plugins. We'll go to 12c next year, but I'd like to know whether we can go straight to 13c, which is already out.

11g has helped increase the performance of our database. We're also able to maintain it easier and better.

It's really not very user-friendly. Once installed and set up, there are still a lot of other steps we've had to take to get it functioning the way we want and need it to.

Deploying it required a lot of customization steps.

The stability is better than with 10g, in our experience with it.

The scalability is OK, but now that we're pushing 30GB of data per hour, there are problems with applications at the OIS level not handling the data correctly.

I performed the full setup myself but winged the rest. I had problems with the patches even though the upgrade installation went well. I spoke with DBA's in other companies and they had no problems with the patches. I still haven't come up with a solution.

It's a good product, better than older versions.

The most valuable feature is the Oracle RAC.

I have used Oracle Database within the last 12 months.

I have not had any bugs or glitches, the solution is stable.

Oracle Database is easy to scale.

We have approximately 200 people using this solution in my organization.

The technical support from Oracle is good and responsive. I used them for security updates and patches.

The setup is fine, but it depends on many factors.

The price of Oracle Database is too expensive and especially for individual environments. The pricing model is not clear, if I want to run it on a virtual environment, I still need to license the whole physical box.

I have evaluated MySQL.

My advice is to others wanting to implement Oracle Database is to first look at the open-source products, such as MySQL, because sometimes they can do as good of a job as Oracle Database.

I rate Oracle Database an eight out of ten.

We're using Oracle Database for corporate enterprise resources planning, manufacturing systems, etc. It's deployed in a Red Hat Linux environment.

I've been using Oracle Database for about 15 years.

Oracle Database is stable. I'm quite happy with the performance.

Oracle Database is scalable. We're running it on around 250 devices.

We previously used some small-scale SQL servers running Microsoft SQL Server for access control.

Installing Oracle Database is straightforwad. 

The price should be lower. We're currently paying for it yearly.

I rate Oracle Database 10 out of 10. I would definitely recommend it.