Oracle Database Reviews

• Online RMAN backup & restoration
• Active High Availability i.e. real application cluster
• Disaster recovery solution (physical and logical standby)

It increased operational efficiency manifold, as it offers lot of features automating operations, and faster failover mechanisms (i.e. almost zero data loss) with smaller RTO and RPO, helping Business Continuity.

It’s easy to find performance bottlenecks, I would prefer it to have a faster read time performance, especially considering read performance of NoSQL systems nowadays.

I’ve used it for seven years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Their tech support it good.

Oracle Database was found to be the most mature solution, in terms of features it offers. Hence, we chose this.

I would rate it mediocre, as it requires knowledge of operating systems and servers. Some people find it difficult due to the lack of OS knowledge.

We did it in-house. You need to do your homework, and read the standard documents thoroughly before proceeding with setup.

It is on the higher side, so it’s better for big enterprises. However, small and medium business can explore cheaper versions of the same product, which doesn’t offer all benefits of the enterprise version, but it will still be good enough compared to almost any other database solution.

Although it’s easy to operate, it needs expert hands, as it is different, and in fact better with a lot of features, compared to cheaper alternatives. So, good skills should be deployed to effectively use the features of the product for a better ROI.

1. Adaptive Query Optimization - enable the optimizer to make run-time adjustments to execution plans and discover additional information that can lead to better statistics. This new approach is extremely helpful when existing statistics are not sufficient to generate an optimal plan.
2. Pluggable databases - allows you to put 253 databases into one instance of Oracle.
3. Redaction Policy - The Oracle Database 12c provides runtime protection of sensitive data. The stored data remains unchanged, while the data to be displayed to the end user is transformed on-the-fly before leaving the database.

I have worked on an Oracle databases that processes over 100 billion rows daily as well as provide reporting in a timely manner to end users. Oracle's years of maturity and continuous improvement allows the database to perform exceptionally well especially on Oracle's Exadata hardware.

I would like to see Oracle Business Intelligence and maintenance tools incorporate virtual reality interfaces so DBAs and end users could interact with the database.

I have used Oracle over 15 years and the database is very scalable, reliable, and well supported.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

We haven't needed to scale it.

The main, most important feature is the integration of the database, security, and performance. Those are the three main features. They have evolved it very well since version 6. It used to be rule-based, now it's cost-based, which is great because there are so many routes to bring in the data. It's a really complex architecture, and the way Oracle has done it is really good.

I work with a couple of other databases too, but with Oracle, it allows you to drill down to a very small level inside the database and return a result that you want. That's another pretty good feature.

Also, Database has low-level security through a virtual private database. Within the same database, we can show two businesses simultaneously without having a different architecture. This really helps us.

A lot of things like a low level security. One of the features that we use virtual private database, which is a low level security. Within the same data base we can show two businesses at the same time, without having a different architecture. It actually helps us.

It's beneficial for our organization because we have a lot of financial data where it has to make sure that something came before on the master data layer. You have to have a node created before you insert the data that leads it to the node.

When there is the high insertion of data and bursts of insertions, Database has to manage the integration, but the way it tries to maintain all the integrations is not necessary. There's a way to de-normalize all this, but not if an application is already downloaded. Database has a lot of limitations, especially when you have a huge data insertion that you're trying to query. That really becomes a limiting factor with Database.

I've been using Oracle products for 22 years.

We have no real issues with deployment.

It's one of the most stable database that I work with. They have been improving with every version. As far as stability goes, I give a very high marks to Oracle.

There are ways you can scale it, but one of the limiting factor is the way Oracle licensing works. The moment you try to out scale it vertically or horizontally, you multiply the Oracle licenses, and a lot of customers are looking into that. How do we optimize those with the performance that you need?

The problem is the way the technical support works. A lot of people try to pass the ball around, and that's a lot of challenge with management of all that. Most of the time, if you really want to work on something you have to raise it to Level 1. You've got to escalate, otherwise things doesn't get worked on. If it's a critical thing, there's no other option.

The initial setup was straightforward, but maybe I'm so experienced that I don't have many issues with it. A new DBA may have a different view of the setup. I would suggest, however, that Oracle should develop a feature in Database that lets you know which products you have a license for and which ones you don't during the setup.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

It's a good, stable system. When it comes to Oracle, you need to understand what to use, how to use it, and look into the cost of it, which is very important.

I really like the way Oracle Database handles crash recovery. I find that that's the most valuable feature among the other databases that I work with. I have yet to see a time when my database crashed, for whatever reason, whether it be node crash or server crash, and Oracle didn't clean it up and it come back online as before. The way Oracle processes cleanup itself and comes back online is great. If one of the Oracle nodes in the cluster goes down, the others keep running, which we're very happy about.

It's a good, solid database architecture, one of the best in the industry. With it, we also have a good partnership with Oracle, who provides us with great support.

It's so huge, so vast. If we're talking about security, there could be improvements. Also, we'd like to be able to come up with migration strategies that involve less downtime. That's one of our struggles with it, particularly when we're migrating sizes of several terabytes. We can't afford to have our agents down for twelve hours at a time to do the migrations. So I'd like to see some more innovative ideas, some more improvements in that area to help us out.

We've had no issues with the deployment.

It's very stable. We've had no issues with instability.

We've been using the add-node functionality. We started with a few of the clusters, the RAC cluster, with two nodes, and we have expanded them to five. We are going to what we call the super-cluster design.

The initial setup is intuitive, though I can't say it's necessarily easy. It's just that I've been doing it for several years now.

We do implementations with our in-house team.

I think Oracle is the way to go. It's a solid RDBMS. There's lots to learn.

To say what is the most valuable feature of Oracle Database is tough because all of it is valuable. I can't necessarily describe a single, most important feature. It's certainly been around for a long time, it's incredibly scalable, and its stability is industry-leading. That makes is very reliable because we know it'll provide us with almost 100% uptime and it's flexible enough to meet our data needs. Oracle also has the best support in the industry.

The price is probably the main area for improvement. There are competitors, so if the people are looking for a cheap solution, they may pick another product that's more affordable for them.

I've been using it for about 20 years.

We've never had any issues with deployment.

Its stability is the best in the industry. It's the main reason we've stuck with it for so long.

It has the best scalability of any database.

Technical support is fine. They have a very strong support team, so really they can pretty much solve any problem that we've had.

The initial setup is very easy and straightforward.

Oracle Database can be implemented at a small or large shop. They have a solution for every size.

The most valuable features for us in our experience has definitely been the security and reliability it brings to our environment. We know that our data is safe and secure and that Database is incredibly stable. There's a peace of mind that it affords us.

Because it's secure and reliable, we can have confidence that we can just go on with business as usual. We're able to focus our efforts on more important aspects of our business instead of worrying about threat protection and lost data.

I've been very happy with the progression of the product. One thing I would like to see is a better feature set for pluggable databases, that is, the multi-tenancy of the database. It's still in its infancy at the moment and I'd like to see in 13c a big leap forward with better support for multi-tenancy.

I've been working with Oracle databases for over 16 years.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

Database has always been solid. There's been a couple little buggy things at the beginning, because I was working with version 7, but from 8i onwards, everything was solid.

There's absolutely no problem scaling it. They give you plenty of options and a lot of best practice in order to be able to do that.

I've always been very happy with Oracle support. I think probably the one thing that I'd like to be able to have is more input into is the feature set for the next release.

The most valuable features of Oracle Database are that it's very powerful, very reliable, and very fast. Those really are the main attributes that any organization should be looking for from a database solution. Can it take the data you throw at it, can you count on it to be available, and will it provide you enough speed so you can work efficiently?

It's a very secure database so that we don't have any worries about security on the database side. We host a lot of data for our customer. It's very important to have a database that's secure and reliable.

It's a very expensive solution. There are other, less expensive products out there, but you wouldn't be getting such a premium product.

We have no issues with deployment.

We have absolutely no issues with the stability. That's one of the primary advantages of Oracle Database.

We've been able to scale it just fine for our needs.

The initial setup was very easy and very straightforward. It's not a difficult product to stand up, and combined with our technical knowledge, the setup was very easy.

We implemented it ourselves with our in-house team.

It's very expensive. You pay a premium price for a premium product.

We didn't really consider other database solutions despite the price because we use other Oracle products already.

Just make sure you read up on it and plan ahead.

The most valuable feature is its ability to be tuned so that we can gather data and our developers can build their code in it without too much hassle. Oracle Database has a lot of memory and other parameters that you can specify in the .ORA file and tune.

They should make new releases more stable, rather than waiting for the product to mature and releasing patches. Also, they should improve their tech support so that it's more consistent.

Also, I'm looking for more security. They give you a lot of options, but they all cost extra. I'm hoping that in the enterprise edition they include some of those options at no extra cost as standard features. It's already expensive as it is.

I've been using it for 20 years.

We've had no issues deploying it.

The newer releases always have bugs and issues, but as the releases mature, they become stable. Take 11g R1, for example, which is a good product, but it initially contained a lot of bugs and kinks. 11g R2 was a lot more stable with many of the issues worked out. There were still some bugs, but they were minor and fixed with patches.

We have used it in rack environments where we use it with Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Grid, and we can scale it.

Technical support, in our experience, is both good and bad. There have been times when we log an issue and the feedback we get or the support we're getting are just not good. But the there are times when within an hour or two we get the right feedback. So I guess it all depends on the engineer who evaluates the ticket and receives it and works on it.

Oracle Database is definitely a great tool. If you're looking for a database technology or tool, you should definitely use Oracle Database. There are many other databases in the market, but I think Oracle has really matured its product over the last ten years. It has a lot of options that do cost extra, but there are a lot of security options in there that are built-in, such as encryption, transportable table spaces, etc.