Oracle Database Reviews

The most valuable features for us are the cloud-like traits of ODB, grid computing with version 11g onward, live database, and Data Guard.

We're a non-profit with branches all over the world -- Africa, India, and the US -- so we need a database solution that can be centralized. We have an entire datacenter in India, but our users need access to it from our other locations.

The key thing we need is a database that can pretty much run virtually in the cloud, that is, with a virtual datacenter. When we decided on Oracle three years ago, OBD was the only database that was cloud-like, scalable, and more robust than other solutions available at the time.

Honestly, it's not really in the cloud as such, but the definition of "cloud" changes daily. It's more on VMs, but the VM's are so powerful that we can access the database from anywhere without investments in machines or other hardware. We've been doing this since 2010 and we haven't hosted with cloud providers like Datamark or AWS, so we essentially have our own cloud.

While Oracle has been excellent, they haven't been growing or leaping forward like other vendors. I heard that Microsoft SQL Server will begin working with Linux. If that happens, Oracle has to do something because the cost will be one-tenth that of Oracle.

We haven't had any issues with the deployment of ODB.

The stability is good as the product has matured over the past few years. We initially implemented in 2014 and had upgrades since. We had some issues, which we told Oracle about and which they fixed. We had integration with a backend database because we are an Oracle workshop when it comes to database. They did not have too many customers using Oracle as a backend database.

We haven't scaled because of the unique constraints of our customized datacenter, but we use Linux because of Windows limitations. But we have been able to go from a mom-and-pop garage shop to where we are now.

The support is amazing. We have a great relationship with the non-profit technical support as well as with our sales rep with whom we've been with for ten years.

We have used Microsoft SQL Server, but the problem with that is that runs only on Windows. We wanted it on other units. Then we used Sybase, but that is more of a financial database, and didn't help much for our non-profit business. Then we used IBM DB2. That's a nice database, but IBM was considerably more of a hardware than a software part.

We wanted someone who is a player only in the database world because we had everything else and because we are non-profit, we do have tie-up with different companies where we get a different special rate for licensing.

We prefer Oracle because they are the niche players in the database world. We are pretty happy.

Because I'm a technical person and I have experience as a database administrator, the initial setup was pretty simple for me. The support was amazing and we didn't have huge roadblocks. If anything happened, such as issues with plugins, Oracle just gave us a patch.

Our implementation was done in-house by me and my team.

Because we're a non-profit, we have a buffet deal. For the first three years, they won't charge us any license fees for any use. It's all-we-can-eat. After three years, they'll come back and look at the footprint and license us based on that. This is a big deal for non-profits, but Oracle is willing to do it.

We looked at others who specialize in the cloud, such as CloudData. But Oracle is penetrating the cloud field. If you look at the Magic Quadrant, Oracle is positioned well with its RDBMS and Exadata, along with EMC Greenplum, Microsoft Azure, IBM's cloud solution, and others. We did PoCs with them all.

Its reliability and security are the features most valuable for us. We know we can depend on it and that it keep our data secure.

It's also a ubiquitous solution. It seems that OBD is everywhere. I know that knowing how to use it in one company will help me in my career at another company.

The biggest improvement to our organization is from a security perspective. It just keeps all our data safe as an integral part of the company. It's our go-to database solution.

Although we're not using the latest version, there are some ODB tools that are quite cumbersome to use. For example, we often use the standard backup tool and have found it to be pretty cryptic. It's needs improvement in usability as it takes a lot of effort to use.

We've been using it since 1992.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's stable. We haven't had any issues with instability.

We don't. I know it does, but we don't. We are a pretty small shop. Our data's small, so not really.

This is one of our favorite things about ODB. The support is pretty good.

I used another database and data storage system as a developer in a prior role.

It's a very complex product, and it takes a lot of skill and experience to implement it. It's a lot easier now, but back then it was like 75 floppy disks for setup.

Consider an open source solution as well.

The key and most valuable feature of any database solution is its stability. In our experience, Oracle Database is highly stable, which is the best part of it. It's certainly much more stable than Microsoft SQL Server.

The biggest improvement to our organization is that with ODB's stability, it gives us back our time and attention to deal with more pressing issues. We know that we have ready access to our data with ODB, and that it can be relied on.

Although ODB is stable and reliable, to make stable and reliable it has to be carefully planned because it's complicated. You really have to know how Oracle works in order to not make mistakes that compromises the DB's functioning. You have to know what you're doing and you should make sure your entire team is familiar with the documentation.

We've had no issues deploying it. Again, you have to be careful, though, because it's complicated.

Stability is a 5 out of 5. Again, ODB's stability is its best and most important feature for us.

Scalability is a 5 out of 5. We've been able to scale it for our needs.

Technical support isn't perfect. I give them a 4 out of 5.

I found setup to be complicated depending on how it's to be used. For us, it was complicated but we knew what we were doing.

There's a lot more to Oracle, and it's not as simple as you think. It's not like anybody can go and install it because you need to know what you're doing. As a team, you have to go through all the proper documentation.

The most valuable feature for us is certainly the scalability of the DB as we need capabilities for multiple terabytes of data.

I don't know much about other organizations, and I've used SQL in the past at other companies, but because most of our customers are different federal government agencies, it's provided us scale to support many terabytes of data.

Recently with the 12.102 version, Oracle decreased the number of hardware you can use. I would like them to revert that back to where it was. We use the standard edition, so obviously that's going to hurt our customers as Oracle is reducing the hardware we can use.

We've been using DB since the beginning, so 33 years now. I haven't used it personally since then, but the company has.

We've had no issues with deployment.

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

It's very scalable, which is the primary reason we use it.

Oracle's technical support is better than most, but it's not perfect. Obviously, when we open a ticket for support, it needs to get escalated a couple of times before we actually get an engineer who can really get down and help us. That's typical of the industry, so it's better than most, but not perfect.

The complexity of the initial setup depends. The patch releases have been simple: you download, you install, and it works fine. There have been no issues that we've run into there. The major upgrades, however, I think with the new 12.102, they've made some changes in it, so we're still trying to figure that one out.

It's a great product, no doubt about it. Oracle did a good job on it and that's why they have a big market share. I think if you're starting from scratch, look for other alternatives. Investigate the alternatives to see if they can meet your needs.

Technically, it's almost flawless, I would say. There are bugs in it of course, but they are bugs that doesn't impact us as a company.

I think the most valuable feature of Oracle 12c is the ability to have portability for all the various databases. You didn't used to have that option and that functionality, so that's made things a lot more flexible in terms of availability, and shortening the time of doing upgrades, and things like that. I really like the flexibility.

I'm not quite sure exactly how long we've been using it, but in my experience, it's certainly provided us a lot more flexibility to do various things from an organizational perspective because of the database portability. It's a high-cohesion solution in terms of different applications and tools that are available to work with it.

Oracle is already working on improvements and in the process of adding new features, such as cloud support. It's just a matter of getting the resources to obtain and use them, and to build our existing system on top of it. I look forward to that.

I've been using Oracle for about six or seven years, and I've been using 12c in the last couple of years.

We didn't have any issues with deployment.

12 seems to be a little bit more stable than 11 used to be, although, knock on wood, we still use a little bit of 11.

We haven't had to do a whole lot of scaling. It's been pretty static in terms of our utilization of it. For any scaling we've had to do, it's scaled to our needs.

They're knowledgeable, proactive. It helps working in a enterprise environment as opposed to working for smaller shops that they don't get that same type of attention.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

It's the way to go. It's the cutting edge, but it's not the bleeding edge, and you can certainly build upon it.

There's a large set of commands in PL/SQL so you can read things in and read things out much more easily than you can do in SQL.

Oracle Database, particularly PL/SQL, is a staple product for getting information out and putting information in. You can take those tools and put them in another environment. It's easy to use and makes the decision to move to another version a no-brainer.

There were issues that arose from a recent upgrade. These issues, however, were quickly resolved before we moved onto a subsequent upgrade.

I've been using the PL/SQL extension for Oracle Database since the early 90's.

We had those issues from the upgrades, but, again, they were resolved before we moved to the next upgrade.

There are some enhancements that have been made to the database, especially PL/SQL. It changes as the product changes. It's not that difficult to find out what those changes are and keep up in order to maintain stability.

There are commands that you can include in your SQL to make sure you've got enough workspace to do what you need to do.

I've used it for so long that I haven't needed to contact them. I haven't run into an issues where I haven't been able to get data out from or put data into the database. I am, however, still learning some feature of PL/SQL, for which I'm using Oracle's Ask Tom a lot. I've found that this Oracle support site is very helpful for reviewing documentation to figure out what I'm missing from my own knowledge.

The initial setup wasn't too complex, although there were the modifications with upgrades that caused some issues. Again, these issues were resolved prior to our next upgrade.

The system does what you tell it to do; it doesn't necessarily do what you want it to do. You have to really ground yourself in education before you are safe working with the tools. The tools are very powerful, but at the same time, there are rules behind what it does and you have to know what they are.

The most valuable features for us are its capability and reliability. It's the best performing database solution I've used, and it's dependable, rarely going down or exhibiting instabilities.

We have a lot of applications that are critical to our business running on Oracle Database. I think it's pretty feature rich, although we don't use all of the features that are available. It's a very solid platform for applications, giving us confidence in the data it maintains and our access to it.

There are so many applications that run with Oracle Database that it's difficult getting our various IT personnel to get tested and certified for it. It's like herding cats. And although the upgrades are not technically difficult, it is difficult to manage all the applications and the people who work with it.

We're mostly on version 11.2.0.4. We've played just a little bit with version 12.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's very solid. We've had no issues with Oracle DB being unstable. Again, its reliability is one of the best features for us.

We have not had to scale it to a great degree, but we've had no real issues with capacity and we have confidence that Oracle DB will scale as needed.

Technical support is generally quite good. We've been overall very satisfied with Oracle's support.

I was involved in the setup of it 25 years ago and it was a transition to Unix at the time. I can't say it was that straightforward, but It was also not unexpectedly complicated.

We generally do a major Oracle version upgrade every year or two and do a major patch upgrade at least once a year if we don't do a major version upgrade. We do upgrades in-house.

I've seen that things are evolving very fast since we first installed Oracle DB 25 years ago and since I've been a DBA for the last 30 years. We've got a lot of expertise in database administration. Honestly, that's being de-emphasized by the cloud offerings for the whole data center. Having people look at rack hardware and install the operating system is being de-emphasized. I think somebody starting out, if they are a not a big operation, they ought to look seriously at using the cloud as an alternative to having to support a lot of IT functions in-house.

Partitions and the various methods available

Statistics for the Partitions Lack of support for Oracle Text Indexing with all the various partitioning options

Gathering Statistics is important for query plans. However, in a partitioned table environment, it would seem that each partition of a table would have about the same number of records especially when the major key is something like transaction date. So why not have an option to copy the statistics from a "standard partition" when a new partition is added? OR allow for parameters in the table partition metadata to store and update the values that have to be copied for the statistics. The partition is not fully loaded until the end of the "transaction day" and maybe the auto-statistics gathering processes can then make the updates to the finer points.Update:Gathering Statistics on Partitioned Tables using the INCREMENTAL = TRUE setting for the table keeps the statistics gathering humming nicely. A bit of a "to do" for the first time though. Also need to be aware that some disk space will be used to store statistics which can be referenced for the next run of gathering statistics (augmenting?)