Oracle Database Reviews

Active Data Guard: This feature is useful for all organizations, I believe, as it provides you the comfort of routing your reporting requirements to a standby site while at the same time redo application is done.

Tablespace Encryption: This feature helps in protecting your data whenever you share it. It prevents unrestricted access to data, no matter whether you are DBA or OS guy.

Data Masking: This feature helps in hiding the confidential information from unauthorized users, such as customer phone#, email, account balance, credit card#, etc.

Database Replay

Active Data Guard has been pretty handy in managing the real-time reporting requirements from our core systems. Tablespace Encryption has also been very helpful in implementing security to ensure that our data is secured.

Data Guard: We face issues while configuring standby sites using Data Guard. The error messages reported do not match with the actual reason for failure. So, proper error logging should be developed so that users can reach the exact root cause.

I have used it for five years.

I did not encounter any deployment issues.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

I rate customer service 6.5/10.

I rate technical support 6.5/10. The reason for such a low rating is that we are located in Asia and whenever we open a SR during daytime, it is routed to an Indian engineer who doesn't provide a lot of support. However, when I open a SR during nighttime, we are assigned some American engineer who helps in resolving the issue pretty promptly. So I think Oracle needs to look into this. It’s my opinion only.

We have been using Oracle from day one.

Installation is pretty simple and user friendly.

In-house implementation.

That’s pretty much financial stuff myself being a DBA can't answer. However, when Oracle is keeping things up and running, then ROI would be good.

License cost for Oracle Database and other products seems to be on the higher side, but even then, more than half of the market is captured by Oracle.

We evaluated MS SQL Server.

Just go for it and explore its features. You will find a pretty easy way to manage your routine tasks.

The most valuable feature of the product for me is the Oracle MTA (Multitenant Architecture) because it can reduce dramatically the operating costs. And, it could lead to license cost savings depending on the aggregation of DBs.

First is operating cost down. There is a lot administrative work, even if there is only one DB, such as backup, tuning, monitoring and patching. DB Integration with MTA contributes to reducing operating costs. Using Oracle MTA, we can operate above actions to multiple database with just one operation. So we can reduce operating cost.

Second is license cost down. With Oracle MTA, we can reduce license cost. Because we can integrate MTA server(s) from a lot of Oracle servers.

Using MTA, the development environment can be easily prepared. Efficient maintenance such as patching and backup to multiple environments can be carried out in a single operation. Also it can be easily migrated to the cloud environment.

In the same user, it is suitable in the test and development environment. And it is also suitable for databases with large numbers of environments.

I have used this solution for over 13 years of pre-sales activities as engineer of Oracle products in the company-wide organization. Recently, I'm in charge of DB security, DB In-Memory, Multitenant and Oracle Cloud.

I did encounter issues with stability. But it was the first release (12.1.0.1). Now, MTA is quite stable at the latest version.

We didn't encounter any issues with scalability. We can use MTA and RAC (Real Application Clusters) in combination, so it can also meet scalability requirements.

Previously, instance consolidation and schema integration was the mainstream. However, instance consolidation can consume a lot of resources, and schema consolidation entails a cost for application modification. MTA has resolved these challenges.

Although the setup itself is not significantly different, we needed a little consideration to configure multitenant designs, such as security settings and operation design.

High DB consolidation ratio leads to reduced license costs, regardless of the Enterprise Edition and Oracle multitenant option license. In addition, running costs should be considered.

There is a lot administrative work, even if there is only one DB, such as backup, tuning, monitoring and patching. DB Integration with MTA contributes to reducing operating costs.

We did not evaluate other options, because there are no other options. Oracle Multitenant is the only option.

The current optimal use case is test and development environment. If you would like to use MTA in advance, you can check it out on Oracle Cloud (PaaS). Because Oracle Cloud can be used as a prepaid system, you can try a variety of optional features without caring about the license costs.

Oracle Database is the industry standard product for a long time. This has been achieved precisely they provide what the customers really want in every new version.

We like and appreciate the fact that Database is the industry standard for RDBMS solutions. Because of this, we know that the product is constantly being developed and improved in terms of functionalities and stability. It's very stable and a very secure place to store data.

We know that it's an investment that gives us peace of mind. It's mature and has a broad community of users.

There are a lot of features that I'm just not sure of yet in their ability to provide us value. I'd like to try a rack implementation and a replication-type software, though I'm not sure of their ability to add value. A more specific area of improvement, would be in technical support. It needs to be better, especially for Oracle's flagship product.

I've been working with it since the 90s, going back to 733.

We don't have any issues deploying it.

We haven't had any issues with crashing or downtimes or anything due to the product. It's been very stable, and there's not really even a thought of it being unstable.

Some of our bigger projects that are non-E-Business Suite, like SAP implementations, go up to five terabyte databases and there no problems scaling there. We've had no issues with inability to scale.

Technical support is definitely challenging as they are not always the most forthcoming with information, nor are they the most highly-trained techs when you open SRs. There have definitely been issues there, especially compared to the costs that you pay for the support.

There's always room for improvement, but we're happy overall.

Vertical scaling is the most valuable feature for us in our use of it with version 11g.

For the company, the greatest improvement came with the integration and higher availability of data. We need to track our customers' needs, and the data with Big Data Solutions is now stored and used to get end user reports via QlikView.

What needs to improve is the real-time query response. We will be changing the Database over to SSD soon, which will improve those response times.

We are using an IBM AIX POWER machine with Oracle 11g. We want to upgrade Oracle Database to 12c.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

We've had no issues scaling it.

Oracle and IBM often come into the office to discuss the situation and any current issues. We also get help with our teams who operate the systems.

The Autolink login is an important feature in the environment that we are in now. The product can also handle any size data, which is valuable because we have a variety of differently sized databases. There is a lot of support for the product and a lot of customizable features and build-ons.

The addition of a feature that better manages auditing and tuning would be useful for us. There are tuning features available already, but I am not yet skilled in those, so I don’t know if they are improvements, and currently, this is one of my biggest challenges.

We have used Oracle Database for about 20 years.

I have not had that many problems with stability over the years. I have found one bug personally, but other than that the Database has been pretty clean.

There are many different options for scaling. You can scale to whatever size you want by adding hardware, partitioning your data, or using some of Oracle’s different technologies.

There is a good knowledge base within the community of Oracle users that you can search to find information about your issues. You can often just Google search problems too.

If you submit a ticket with Oracle, they have a support system. While we get good support on our tickets, it can be challenging. Sometimes the support team disagrees with what you want to do and tells you to work in a different way. They also get frustrated with undocumented features, and if you have written code that you were not supposed to that runs in the current release, it could be prohibited in an additional release, forcing you to rewrite your code.

We have not had any major problems with upgrading. Like I said in regards to technical support, sometimes you have to do some recoding, but for the most part, upgrades have been pretty smooth. If your work is vanilla, you are fine. If you are trying to do some of the cutting edge stuff, there can be issues.

Make sure you know what pieces you need, since Oracle has a lot of components and add-ons that you can buy. Also, make sure you know what you are going to do with the product before you buy it, and research the marketplace to see if it is the best product for your needs. While there are many options, Oracle is recognized as one of the leaders in the marketplace. You just have to see if it is worth the money for what you want to do with it. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature is security; you do not lose information.

As a result of using the Oracle Database, users are confident that the information is correct. It doesn't get corrupted, it doesn't get lost, and you can always access it and find it. Before clients used the Database, they used spreadsheets and needed to do a lot of crosschecking between documents to see if operations were valid. After starting with the database and realizing that the information there is always correct, teams start to be more productive, since they don’t have to spend that time crosschecking.

We've been using it for more than ten years and it really works well.

It never crashes, so we can have it running for months. It's amazing for the customer because they don't even know it's running. After some time, they forget that there is a database behind them.

We have clients that started with one user and now are running up to 200 users. It’s the same version with bigger hardware. It’s amazing the way the database can scale.

Usually response is very good. We have had to escalate issues a few times, but normally it’s fixable.

It doesn't matter which version you are using or how you deploy it. It will have the same scripts and the same configuration, regardless of size and complexity.

We have compared it with Microsoft and IBM, and this is a ten out of ten.

It helps us to manage and run the company.

As a developer, I use the reporting side. We need a better reporting tool with some kind of data warehouse capability. We are happy with the product, though, and are just looking for new features. Most of the time we end up using any additional features they provide.

We have used the product for twelve years.

It has been stable for all of our twelve years of use. We don’t have much downtime. The product is really good.

It meets our scalability requirements right now.

We are quite happy with the support we get.

We haven’t experienced any problems regarding product upgrades. We follow a very systematic approach so that we don’t have downtime.

We are a big company, and we are satisfied. I think it is a good product. I would give it an eight out of ten.

You can do just about anything with Oracle Database.

We use it for everything. We have our students, HR, payroll and financial all in one database.

We use a third party software called illusion banner on top of the customization that we have, so we wait for their improvements or do customization ourselves.

I have been using the product for 14 years. I started with Oracle 7.

I have never had an issue with stability.

It needs to be scaled based on how you're using the app.

I have reported few bugs. They do good job, and there are often solutions available on the Internet.

We have downtime during upgrades that can last from hours to days. The last database update took two or three days.

All I can say is to trust Oracle. I would rate it a ten out of ten.