Oracle Database Reviews

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?)

Reliability, CBO

Processing and accounting of credit card transactions.

16 years

I've encountered stability issues with Oracle on Windows Server after regular updates.

In-house implementation

16 months

From a business stand point, the ability to go to market, compliance and business enabling is what matters most. Oracle database has rich functionalities that helped us design a system that meets our business' changing needs. However I was responsible for maintaining service levels. My focus was on how to provide consistent response time and the throughput amidst changing business needs and growing data. Oracle database offers one of the industry's best diagnostic infrastructure that enables expert DBA to know exactly how system behaves under different workload, thus able to proactively prevent any performance bottlenecks or quickly respond to exceptional situation or even be able to predict future performance.

Databases are usually unknown to business users. The business users draw value by using the system to operate the business processes and making the decision at various stages. Businesses do not expect exceptions in their daily routine from a computerized system. Having said that, consistently performing systems enables businesses to serve the customer in consistent manner.

Today we do lots of database consolidations, which means multiple applications reside in the same physical databases using one or more schema. I would like to see some seamless feature to simply drag and drop all the objects belong to one application from one database to another database.

I have used Oracle database releases from 8i to 11g since 2001. We used it primarily as a database component of Oracle Application 11i. Subsequently we continue to expand the usage to many new application systems including business intelligence and B2B applications.

Oracle databases are the most reliable, accompanied by good documentation and support. We never encountered an issue during the deployment which was due to a product issue.

Any system goes through a phase of stabilizing which takes a fair amount of time. Fortunately, with Oracle database, this time has reduced significantly.

Not in our line of business.

Since 2001, I have enjoyed reliable service from Oracle Support.

We always used Oracle Database. We also have SQL Server databases serving many small-medium scale applications. And they perform better as well. In my experience, SQL server databases offers stable database environment. It is easy to use and quick to learn for new DBAs with same windows UI.

Initial setup was certainly complex, specifically from the application standpoint. We had deployed many new modules that Oracle Application 11i offered in their version 11.5.4. These products had significant impact on database performance. There were also many customizations in the application system. It took us almost 6 months to establish consistently performing system environment.

In Singapore we implemented through Oracle Consulting. They are one of the best in the industry with a huge amount of dedication.

Oracle database is one of the best database systems with largest population of experts around helping the global communities. Hence the knowledgebase is rich and vast. However, workout a strong business case in order to get it approved by the sponsor. As a technology expert, IT function needs clear strategy while selecting one product over another.

• Oracle ensures high level security by performing each transaction in isolation from others. The database management as well as user management of oracle is very effective • Provides data consistency as well as data concurrency. • Oracle database guarantees that the data returned by a single query is committed and consistent with respect to a single point in time. • Supports very large size databases. So it is very beneficial for multinational organizations having billion of records. • Oracle database ensures high level availability by providing solutions for fixing problems rapidly and minimize both planned and unplanned downtime. These solutions help enterprises maintain business continuity 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

• Due to its high cost, oracle is not the first priority for the organizations having budget constraints. • A full time oracle Administration staff is always needed for the complex configuration of oracle. • After installation, oracle drains lot of memory causing slow performance of system • Oracle is not popular with open source code. MYSQL is a better option.

Oracle is a powerful relational database management system that ensures high level security, consistency and data concurrency. Oracle architecture is split between the logical design and the physical design. This structure means that for large-scale distributed computing, the data location seems local and transparent to the user, allowing for a more modular physical structure that can be added to and altered without affecting the activity of the database, its data, or users. The sharing of resources in this way allows for very flexible data networks whose capacity can be adjusted up or down to suit demand, without degradation of service. It also allows for a robust system to be devised as a single point failure can’t bring down the whole database across a network.