Oracle Database Reviews

I'm not using a lot of different Oracle Database functions, but for us, the fact that they have a documentation in Japanese is quite important. It's quite easy for us to find what we want to do. We wish that the community in the Japanese language would become more activate in the future.

The benefit that we get from using the Oracle Database is the sense of security or the stability.

Others would be better fit to answer this, but I hope that the product will improve in terms of usability (user-friendliness).

After the release we need to do a performance tuning, so we need to figure out what we can do for the visualization for the performance tuning. We wish that Oracle could offer this as a product so that we are able to easily start using it. 

No, but I was involved partially when we developed the environment of the Oracle Database. At that time I had the impression that it was not so difficult, it was rather smooth.

We compared it to other competitors. In the end, the end-user is the one to select which product they want to use. What we can offer is that in terms of the security or in terms of the share, how many companies are using it, which big names are using the Oracle product?

In the past when we wanted to merge data, we needed to consider the series of the data, but with Oracle Database there is no need to index the data. That's the important feature.

It's been only two years since we introduced the database, so we are unable to identify a clear benefit yet.

Compared to its reputation, it's worse than expected. The system went down two times. It said that when there's a shutdown it's only for one system, and not both systems at the same time, but it actually did occurred.

Maybe it is specific to the way we use the databases, but we introduced Database to different operations in the organization. We didn't actually introduce Database to be shared among all the different departments.

We had improved the version of the operating system. We did a patching of the Database. They helped resolve the problem because we didn't experience similar issues again. We can say that they helped us.

We used to only use IBM Databases, and it really restricted our options. We wanted to broaden our options by introducing another Oracle system.

We contracted with Oracle without the maintenance agreement. We had actually built the organization that way since it was easier for us to develop. We really did not try to fit with the system. We tried to fit with the operations, so it was rather difficult for us to manage. We ended up having less memory.

We really didn't consider any other options because we need to have a major name as a provider. We need to exchange the maintenance agreement through the third party vendors. If it's a small name vendor, and we have difficulty receiving the maintenance support, then we need to provide maintenance on our own. We would like to prevent that situation from happening.

The main features that I take into account when I talk about databases of any kind are high availability, reliability and manageability. Oracle RDBMS has all that.

The high availability and reliability with Oracle RAC, Oracle Dataguard and Oracle Flashback, the manageability with several views and packages like Advanced Workload Repository(AWR), Active Session History(ASR), SQL Tuning Advisor, SQL Plan Control, and many others to monitoring and troubleshooting issues and bottlenecks, are valuable features.

With Oracle RAC, we can reach near to the dreamed 99.999% of availability in a year. Oracle Enterprise manager allows us to see the "big picture" and take proactive actions to maintaining the environment.

Oracle RDBMS has great features, but I believe that Oracle could be more flexible with the offering of some extra options, and include them in the main license. Today, a High Availability or MAA environment with an Oracle database is already expensive, plus with those extra options, it could increase the cost much more.

Oracle RDBMS has a lot of features and is extremely stable, but all this come with a price, and in this case a big one. So, I would advise you to use Oracle RDBMS mainly for medium and large enterprises. For small enterprises, I advise using other RDBMs, like SQLServer or PostgreSQL.

The most valuable feature of Database is the reliability that we get from it. We really depend on it being up and available because we're a manufacturing company. It's got four 9's of uptime, and that's incredibly important.

It goes back to the reliability factor with Database. We've been an Oracle Database customer for years and years, through PeopleSoft, through EBS and other products that we have that use the database. It's pretty straightforward, it's easy to manage, and there's pretty good support for it. All of these things are of vital importance to our business.

We'd like to get some more add-ons, such as Database Vault for security. Other than that, I'd say that support has been harder and harder to get. I can remember 14 years ago, working with Oracle support, talking to the analyst on the phone, and they would sit there and work with you until the problem is resolved. Now, we spent a lot of our time and effort and wheels trying to work with support and get handed off to the next analyst and you start from scratch. We lose a lot of time. A lot of times we just have to escalate it up, without really giving it enough time. I don't know if the level-one folks are just searching through the knowledge base, like we can, online. So the biggest problem has probably been Oracle support.

I came on board at this company in 2003. We've had Oracle Database in place since at least that time. I believe they were on 7.3 when I first started. We don't really use a lot of the features that are available in there as we're just a pretty vanilla type of operation. There are a bunch of features that we would like to use, but we just don't or we're not licensed to use them. The features we'd like to use are the compression and the encryption.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had nothing but good stability around Database.

We sized our database well for what our expected transactions were going to be. We never had to scale it up. Of course, you add space to it over time. We have done that with nothing that causes any issues.

I thought that the upgrades were fairly easy. I've done a few and it's fairly spelled out as there is a lot of knowledge base around out there. If you do run into problems, which I found going from 7 to 8 to 9 to 10 to 11, the fixes have been fairly easy. I expect going from 11 to 12 that they will be easy as well.

It's one of the more expensive database products. From a business perspective, we try to leverage our whole entire Oracle footprint to drive down the pricing. Instead of your list price that you see on the web for Database, for example, we can work with ourselves from Oracle and we can make a bigger purchase of more products at a reduced rate. We get the Cadillac for the non-Cadillac price.

You have to have a good plan of what you want to do, what your business is going to need. Are you going to need a Cadillac RDBS software system -- Oracle? Can you do it with one that isn't a standard versus Oracle Enterprise Edition? Stuff like that. Be sure that you know what your requirements are. Be able to look into the future and see what they are going to be in three, four, or five years hence.

RDBMS, we still believe, is Oracle's core product. Hence any time we are looking at any database features or building a new database, Oracle is always our product of choice because of its stability, scalability, reliability, and flexibility.

It would be the stability that's improved our organization the most. We are a 24/7 manufacturing plant. We take one day off a year, Christmas Day. Other than that, we're building and creating drugs and the stability of the Oracle database enables us to have near 100% uptime 24/7/364.

It's so expensive, particularly Enterprise Edition, and that would be my number one gripe. It's very, very expensive. Also, Oracle makes a big show of its new features and enhancers with each new release, but it's very rare that any of those enhancements come with Database by default. You have to pay for each of those enhancement -- and pay heavily at that.

In the latter versions of the 12c product, I've actually found it a little bit more difficult to set up than it was before. I find that Oracle is introducing many, many, many new features with each part of the database. Sometimes I think they're losing focus of the core components and what customers actually need. I think if they concentrated on the core elements of RDMS, which, for me, is their number one product, I think before going on the periphery and looking at small enhancements or additions to the product, they should look into making it even more stable before they do these major releases.

It's been very stable for us.

I would say the scalability sets it apart from others. We run a big manufacturing plant and the database is growing at a very very, high rate, but we know with the Oracle RDBMS, it can sustain growth from now and into the future.

I actually found that the earlier versions of RDBMS were actually easier to set up, so I've been working with the Oracle product right from Oracle 7, and I obviously will in 12c. I find now in 12c, I would expected laying out Oracle Database to become easier, but I actually think it's a little bit more complicated now in these later versions. I can categorically say that the joining up with the Oracle agent between RDBMS and Oracle Enterprise Manager is an extremely complicated process. When we were on TNG before we'd done any upgrades, the agent to get the database to talk to Enterprise Manager was a really, really simple thing to do. In fact, right now it's extremely complicated.

For installing the database or looking at the database, I would say look at the components that you need within the database. What we generally find is that most of the features that we want, or most of the features that are available in Enterprise Edition, we actually wouldn't use, so take time and you might actually see them only by using Standard Edition.

The reliability and speed of Oracle Database are its most valuable features. The amount and complexity of data it can handle is really great, especially in agribusiness.

From a business perspective, it's an enterprise-class database that is extremely reliable. It's rock solid and we never had issues with it. Because of that, we can continue to run our business without fear that something will happen to all the sensitive, business-critical data that have in it.

I think that technically, it's nearly a flawless product. But, when it comes to pricing, it's very expensive. In fact, it's quite a bit pricier than probably its closest competition, Microsoft SQL Server.

Also, even though it may seem easy to install, you have to follow the documentation closely because there are some things that may cause you to trip up.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had absolutely no issues with instability. It's incredibly stable, which is one of the reasons we chose it despite the price.

It's been scaling just fine for us. We've had no issues with adding more and more data.

The initial setup should be pretty straightforward, and it was for us. However, you should know what you're doing to have a successful setup. You should get training if you don't have experience.

We implemented it ourselves with our in-house team.

Compared to something like Microsoft SQL Server, it's quite a bit pricier. Oracle Database is the better product, but you definitely pay for that advantage.

It's a very powerful, stable tool. You do have to follow the instructions closely during setup and you have to be willing to pay a premium for a superior product.

In my opinion, it's one of the strongest databases available in the world. It's very robust and you can do the tuning. You can tune it and customize it the way that you need it.

Its RMAN backups are really complex. I'm not a DBA, there should be a better way to perform those backups.

We have had no issues with deployment.

It's been very stable, and that's one of the best features. It very rarely has bugginess.

RAC can be simplified, basically like ASM. RAC DBAs need to really follow their processes because if one thing goes down, bringing up CRS would be a nightmare, even for a DBA who specializes in RAC. It's not a regular database and you need to learn the internals of it. Troubleshooting it is very different because it's tightly integrated with the ATC process of the Linux OS.

It would be much better if there certain values available. If those values aren't available, don't bother trying to integrate it with the OS. You should run your own shell, which is something I think would be better.

It's not that easy to migrate and you can get stuck. It depends on the level of experience, but if it's for a fresh migration, it's fairly complex. Once you get the hang of it, though, it's not that difficult.

We implemented it ourselves with our in-house team.

It's expensive, that's for sure. Because if any of the other databases are compared, Oracle Database is the only expensive product out there. Open Source products like Cassandra, MongoDB, NoSQL, those are the pretty much the same job. Oracle Database, though, might be the fastest RDBMS database we've seen. That might be the reason that it's expensive. It's also the market leader and they own a large market share.

If you are using E-Business Suite, you don't have any other option to explore another database. Depending on the nature of business, if you don't need an RDBMS, go with an open source database which would be much easier to manage and, particularly, to grow vertically instead of just horizontally.

Lately in 12c, they've actually come out with an adaptive optimizer, which I think is great strides in getting performance and doing the right things in the database and getting those queries back to the end users just as fast as they can without a DBA having to do anything about it. A lot of the times the optimizer can now adapt and actually learn from itself and store that information off, so it's kind of an interesting implementation that they've done.

Definitely the quality, enterprise-wide they have all the bells and whistles if you need a stable, secure environment, Oracle's the only way to go.

I think they're heading on to the track of automating some of the things that DBA's had to do, like again the adaptive optimizer. We don't have to worry about statistics all the time. That'll actually grow and learn itself.

Basically with the Real Application Clusters and Data Guard and all that, disaster recovery should be no problems with Oracle. I mean, if you have an outage getting across different data centers, all of that is pretty well baked in right now.

With the Real Application Clusters, Exadata, they've just answered a lot of that. They're coming up with in 12.2 with sharding, to be able to scale it across worldwide so very, very efficient that way.

Oracle's licensing is kind of a con. It's the expense of it depending on all of the features that you want. That would be the main consideration I think as a company when they're looking at different database vendors. Plus, just what I mentioned, the stability and the security aspects of it.

Evaluation criteria: stability, security, all of that. Be able to back it up. If there is a disaster, be able to easily recover it. Data is becoming increasingly important. With so much of it in the world right now that anything you lose, or can be hacked into can be very serious. It's definitely a vendor that's selling databases, it's something that we have to be concerned about.

Security should always be on database vendors minds because as soon as they plug one hole, somebody else is going to find another hole. Apple just lately trying to open that phone up for the terrorists that was kind of a major thing, and they hacked it. There is always people trying to get into different data sets so very important especially with your credit cards and everything else that are stored in databases needs to be continually looked after and improved upon.

Rating: I would say it's the leading [solution], a ten, of all the vendors that are out there and security, stability, scalability, all of that. 

I'm excited about the sharding feature that they're implementing and it seems like it's going to help huge companies that have data all over the world to make it more efficient, more perform better.