Oracle Database Reviews

My use case is a lot of banking solutions. Data sometimes is static in nature, but in a majority of the cases, it is dynamic as well. Oracle database is a focalization database.

Oracle Database has good performance dynamics with respect to oncoming data and fetching of data which gets loaded. All of the same processes are done by a system database administrator or even user initiated financials.

I've found performance streaming to be a valuable feature.

It is also a stable and scalable solution.

It is easy to install and easy to use as well.

They need to work on non-relational data a bit more. If Oracle Database can support non-relational data streaming, it would be great.

Pricing could be improved as well.

I've been using it for more than 10 years.

As for the stability of this solution, it's a hundred percent reliable.

Scalability differs depending on the schema created in Oracle Database to access the database artifacts. For example, in a normal recessional database, which does not have much centralized or decentralized schema, scalability can be very high. However, in cases where there is a centralized schema, the scalability has to be defined by the database administrator.

Our whole engineering team currently uses this solution.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate technical support at 9.5.

The initial setup is very straightforward, and Oracle Database is very easy to use.

The licensing is on a monthly basis. Improvement in pricing would be nice.

When you are into domains such as NIC, BFSI, retail, and account switching, then Oracle Database is definitely your best option. There are some aspects of Oracle Database that need improvement, but it can still be considered a good solution.

All in all, I would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

The most valuable feature is how evolved the solution is right now. It's been around for a while, and I think it's been servicing a lot of different use cases. I think it's really stabilized, evolved, and you can actually put it to use in multiple scenarios. It adapts itself just as well to most business use cases.

I think the best part about Oracle is it keeps evolving. It's not adding any more features to it. There's a big move toward custom cloud services - big databases in the cloud - and obviously there are people with apprehensions in terms of what will happen if that data is shared. They are working towards addressing that issue. They are kind of compartmentalized, and kind of made some of the domains private, to maintain the security for certain critical domains. You still have the power of using the cloud. That's the great thing about it: It keeps evolving. It doesn't stay still. It's very compelling.

It also provides reliability, in terms of handling large volumes of data. I don't believe there's another database server that people would pick. Given a choice, everybody would like to go with Oracle.

I think those are the two big features that really stick out.

It has definitely improved the way my organization functions. It's our database management tool. We have a lot of sensitive information. Different business verticals have a lot of sensitive information that they want to reliably preserve somewhere, and also be able to call back upon in a very secure manner. Oracle does just that.

At the same time, it has a lot of the algorithms where it tries to optimize itself in terms of how fast you can get the data out, and also how fast you can write to it as well. I think it's definitely improved and provides benefits to the industry; not just for the gaming industry that I'm part of, but generally for all verticals in the business world. As I’ve mentioned, it’s the database of choice for most business verticals.

I’d like to see them include a certain amount of intuitiveness in the optimization of the queries, and the algorithms for that could be better. There's still room for improvement in those areas.

One of the things that is also mentioned about Oracle is that with the RAC architecture, the storage is shared, and that sometimes becomes contentional. It's not so much the processing on the nodes; it's the data processing that becomes a point of contention sometimes – if they could do something so we can customize the RAC in some way, and also implement sharing, something along the lines of what Perl OOP has, where the storage is also exclusive to the nodes. I'm sure something like that can be brought in. Having mentioned that, I'm pretty sure they're already researching into it. That's something from my experience that can be improved.

I don't think you would pick another database for stability; for financial data, or anything related to money transactions, where you want to reliably store data, and you don't want to lose any data. You don't want to try to save something in the database and then go in the next day and not have it, obviously. Oracle is right up there in terms of stability.

Obviously, the scalability factor was increased with the Oracle Real Application Clusters (RACs). You have multiple instances of Oracle, with the shared storage, so you can spawn multiple processes to do large volume data lifting. You don't want to rely on one instance alone. You don't want to load that one node alone. It can do everything. You can spread it across nodes. The RAC solution gives you that.

In terms of the data scalability itself, if you don't want a shared storage, you have solutions such as Exadata. It provides very good storage and gives you great performance.

In all respects, Oracle on all fronts is doing great, including scalability. I don't see any issues with it right now. As I’ve mentioned, the great thing about the product is that it keeps evolving and tries to improve.

I think it's great to have those features.

Technical support is a little sketchy. It depends on who you get on any particular day. Oracle is a worldwide organization, so I guess there are certain sections that are not really well covered, in terms of building up a knowledgebase, and trying to go back and see how a problem was solved in the past, which should be an easy thing to do.

I think sometimes it comes down to doing that: going back, looking at the issue you are reporting, determining whether you've faced it before, and what the solution was. If there isn't a solution and if this issue hasn't been reported earlier, then be intuitive about it. That part was missing in the few instances where I've had the opportunity to call support.

As I’ve mentioned, it’s a worldwide organization. They're available around the clock, covering different time zones. All those aspects are covered. I think a little more intuitiveness in the solutioning for the support issues would go a long way in improving the experience.

We previously used plenty of solutions. Oracle was an easy choice. If cost is not a constraint, I would recommend Oracle ten times out of ten.

Setup is never straightforward. It's a pretty complex piece. I have actually overseen it, but it's mainly the database administrators, the DBAs, who actually worked on it. They do come back and work closely with us architects and engineers, in terms of how to best configure the infrastructure.

I wouldn't say that it is straightforward, but at the same time, it's been done so many times, there are so many use cases to fall back on. I'm pretty sure that if you get stuck somewhere, you will get the knowledge base, go back and get past that issue that you're facing at that moment.

It's all down to being so evolved. Oracle has been around for a while, so you have those benefits.

We moved from another solution, knowing the history of Oracle. We earlier conceptualized to be on Informix. Informix was one of the options we really considered. There wasn't much of innovation happening in Informix. It was more legacy. I think that is a reason why we moved to another database system that is more active with more innovation covering different aspects: scalability, data volume management and those kinds of things. At that point, Informix was definitely the only other option. Subsequently, we looked at other solutions such as MySQL for cost purposes, but having explored each of those, they don't really match up with Oracle for me; the scalability, the data volume management, those features, along with the reliability. There's a lot of hand-holding support that needs to go into those products to be able to match what Oracle offers.

In terms of data security and reliability, if that is of paramount importance, I would definitely suggest Oracle. If cost becomes a factor, in terms of the licensing models I’ve mentioned, then probably I would recommend a cheaper solution - maybe even open source - but that comes with a tradeoff of the data not being reliable.

For financial institutions, financial organizations, you would not want to put your data at risk. I think it's tradeoff with those aspects when making your choice.

The most important criteria when I’m looking at a vendor such as Oracle are the support and licensing. I look at the licensing model, in terms of whether there are certain things that they can do to support a company like ours, who've been engaging with them for so long. We have different business models. If they can offer some licensing options that would be more attractive to meet those business models, maybe offer some innovative solutions, that's something that I would look for.

In terms of the support aspects I’ve already mentioned, there are specific business use cases we're trying to solve, and not just rely on the knowledge base that's already accumulated.

Those are some of the things I look for.

We use Oracle Database to run applications. We use it for our clients' databases and applications.

Whenever a client has problems or requires new implementations, they approach us. We provide training and coaching with application implementations. Currently, one such implementation is underway in the UK.

The product is very stable. We use it for supporting applications, including data warehousing.

The solution could be cheaper and adopt AI space.

I have been using Oracle Database for 25 years.

The product is stable.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

The solution’s scalability is good. It caters to small and medium enterprises with different products and ranges.

I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten.

Technical support could get better.

Neutral

The initial setup is quite simple. We mostly use the installation pack and code pack. Our setup includes a script center, shell scripts, and commercial Java courses.

The product is expensive.

We use database clusters for different clients depending on the SLA. We use Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Advanced Compression. We use These specific options for various clients; however, the selection depends on the client's needs.

We have robust protection measures that are ensured using encryption technologies such as Transparent Database Encryption provided by Oracle. These features are available across all our database offerings, and we have implemented them for our clients accordingly.

We are heavily involved in AI development, and eventually, our products are tailored to fit into the AI space seamlessly.

Integrations are pretty transparent based on the type of solutions and the specific customer requirements. Customer relations between Oracle products are typically straightforward, whereas integrating with third-party products may present some challenges.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I use Oracle Database for storage, proxy, and general database stuff.

The reporting feature was fine for what we were using it for. Oracle Database has been serving its purpose, and I was happy. 

Their migration strategies could be better because most of these companies keep the same version for six or seven years and then update it to the latest version.

I have been using Oracle Database for five years.

Oracle Database is scalable. It simply comes down to how you design the transaction screen of the database. We have more than 100 users because they use the applications.

Before Oracle Database, I used IBM Db2 and Microsoft SQL.

The initial setup was straightforward. It doesn't take long once you have the server. I would say it takes a maximum of five minutes to implement this solution. We have five technical people to deploy and maintain this database solution.

We implemented this solution by ourselves.

The price is relative. Licensing costs differ based on how often you'll use the product. They also provide discounts based on the bandwidth or the use cases you want to run on it.

I would recommend this solution to potential users. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Oracle Database a nine.

We use Oracle Database for our ERP systems mainly because we provide IFS for customers and the IFS utilizes Oracle Database. We generally don't use other Oracle tools because of a bad experience with an R&D project in the past where we had to find the best solution for AI/neural network platforms.

We assessed using Oracle for these AI platforms, but we had plenty of problems with the proper setup of the test version of Oracle Cloud. Frankly speaking, we stopped testing and using Oracle in this R&D project and switched to other tools that are simpler to setup and simpler to understand the pricing. No one was sure how much would have to be paid for the platform to support our AI requirements such as natural language recognition and other things.

Because of these factors, we have essentially stopped using the other Oracle tools and we now only use Oracle Database for the ERP systems that we run for ourselves and for our customers. For this purpose, we use Oracle as a permanent database that is situated on-premises. We have quite a wide range of versions of Oracle Database amongst ourselves and our customers because many of them are older installations that are still operating. In all, there are about 10,000 users of Oracle Database throughout our customers, and perhaps 2,000 users in my organization.

Oracle is a good database with decent performance, which is fortunate because we are required to use this database for our ERP system. Even if we thought Oracle was the worst database in the world, we would still have to use it.

In my opinion, the pricing of all the additional tools that Oracle provides is very complicated. The pricing model is very unfriendly for the user, and for the web vendors.

When it comes to new features, we don't desire anything at this moment. We are completely dependent on this ERP system which we provide and we only need the tools from Oracle that our ERP system needs, and nothing more. Our only concern is the performance of the database. If Oracle could make the performance better on low-end hardware, that would be nice. 

I have been using Oracle Database for 10 years. 

As far as I know, we have no problems with stability.

The scalability is good.

There have been no issues with their technical support. As I am aware, we have had issues in the past, especially with servers and other things, but today there are no special issues or problems. Everything is quite well-addressed by Oracle, in my opinion.

The setup of the Oracle database for an ERP system is generally quite simple. There are specific installation steps that are completely scripted by the ERP system, so you simply have to do everything the documentation asks you to do, and that's all. There's nothing special or super difficult about it and we are generally able to install a database within a day.

We mainly use a special license for ERP systems specifically, instead of a general purpose license. This ERP-focused license is very simple. You just have to use Oracle Database with an ERP system and that's it.

As databases go, Oracle Database is quite a good database with decent performance, and I think that's all there needs to be said.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Because I worked with various organizations, most of the time we used it for government and other centers, such as managing transport systems.

It performs quite well.

In general, Oracle is quite good. It's a large database that houses many applications.

In terms of backup Basically, I believe that will depend, particularly on backup and those components, on the knowledge that you have. However, if you have the proper knowledge, it should not be a problem for you. The database does not cause problems when properly configured and best practices of database administration are followed.

When compared to others such as Postgres, Oracle is a very good database.

Oracle Database is easy to use.

The only issue was the same as with the EDS licenses. When you try to tell customers that you can critically patch their system, they always complain about the cost. In terms of pricing, I believe Oracle should be aware of this fact. I'm not sure if it's because it's only happening here in Africa, but some of the guys I spoke with prefer to patch all the time. When you ask people in this town, "Look guys, can you critically patch the system?" they will tell you it's too expensive.

That, I believe, is a major issue. But with that solution, I'm not sure how it can be resolved, but I think most people will be willing to always do patches on a monthly, quarterly basis, as Oracle recommends.

They can increase the number of products available in free accounts for people to try. So many more people will be able to migrate to the cloud.

I have been using Oracle Database for approximately five years.

We are using both old and new versions.

Oracle Database is quite scalable.

They have a large number of options depending on the needs of the organization, allowing any organization to deploy according to their requirements. You can add or remove items as time allows, it's very scalable.

In our organization, we have more than 100, but less than 1,000 users.

Recently, I proposed the migration from on-premises to the cloud. I've noticed that alternatives are bringing a lot in the business, particularly in the cloud spectrum. Convincing customers to try to migrate to the cloud today is another task. It's more like there's something frightening there. I'm not sure what they're afraid of, but it's a matter of education and demonstration. I can download Oracle Database and experiment with it on my own, as long as I'm not using it for commercial purposes. I can do it if I try it on my own. 

I believe they should increase that even in the cloud. They have an Oracle Always Free account on the cloud, but it has a time limit, of a month. They will give you one month's free package for you to try. I have tried it many times. What I've noticed is that they should add more products to the Always Free account so that people, particularly on our continent, who are still skeptical of the cloud, are not left out.

They believe they will inquire as to where we will store our information. How do you know you're getting access to our data? As a result, there is still a lot of information that needs to be taught. I think the best thing Oracle could do is try to improve on that so that most people can keep trying and see that there's nothing to be skeptical about.

Technical support is quite good.

The initial setup is quite easy. In part, it is easy depending on the scope of the project. Maybe it's different for each project. For example, if you need to set up a rec, you need to know what is required, because this is a single database.

It took a few hours to deploy.

For my personal use, I completed the installation myself. 

When deploying for production, I worked with a partner who had a specialized team of system administrators and application developers.

This solution is only deployed and maintained by me.

It's been quite a long time since I looked into the price.

I believe they should also devote more time to learning Oracle. They will also notice that Oracle is not difficult to install or administer if best practices are followed. And, depending on your goals, I believe anyone can do it. Because Oracle Database has so many features, you can do audit vaults and data guides on it, depending on how you want to run your business.

Another thing I would recommend is that people be aware that Oracle has opened its website for people to sign up for free and then download the software for practice, study, or training purposes only. If you intend to use it for production purposes, that is when you should purchase a license.

Because of the prices, I would rate Oracle Database a nine out of ten, otherwise, I think that Oracle is still the best.

I worked on private on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments.

We use Oracle Database primary for business intelligence in the telecom domain. We are generating all of our KPIs. Additionally, we use it for data warehousing purposes.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Database is all the functionalities. When we write a code we sometimes have to create an explicit functionality to process the data that we want. At times we find that there is already existing functionality in data created by Oracle itself, it is helpful.

The integration can be made much easier for the Oracle tools, for example, Oracle Database or OPI. The integration sometimes can be a little complicated for us because we have to do a number of integrations with other tools, such as Oracle computation. The integration could be more streamlined and easier to work with.

I have been using Oracle Database for approximately 10 years.

Oracle Database is a very stable solution. If we find a bug or issue then we have to log those ourselves with Oracle. After some time we receive a patch update to fix those problems.

Oracle Database is scalable.

I would recommend Oracle Database for large enterprises because the smaller companies would not be able to afford it.

The technical support of Oracle Database is okay. The last time I was working in South Africa and when I have to use the Oracle support of South Africa it was poor. We did not receive a proper response from Oracle then. Every time we had to escalate our issues or we had to log with Oracle to have the higher-level management. Eventually, our issues were resolved. However, I have never had an issue with the support from Oracle in India or the USA.

The implementation of the Oracle Database can be a lengthy process. It is not difficult, but it can take a lot of time.

I do not have first-hand knowledge of the price of the support. However, I have heard from my seniors or the experienced people who work on the pricing and scaling, the price of Oracle is a bit higher. The reason is Oracle provides enterprise-level applications, only large enterprises can afford Oracle applications or tools.

I rate Oracle Database an eight out of ten.

I rated the solution an eight because there is still a lot of improvement needed. The user experience could be better, the interfaces could improve.

I know that there are a couple of new applications already out by Oracle, such as Oracle Analytical Services and Oracle Analytical Clouds, which are more user-friendly. Oracle needs to make databases more user-friendly and easier to work on. At this time we have to login into the front end and the backend to do a lot of configurations and it would be much better if we had some type of interface to work on.

If I want to teach someone who is totally new to this environment, he or she might have worked in some other applications similar to Oracle Database, such as SQL Server or MySQL, but if I want them to learn in Oracle it can be difficult for us to teach them. It would be much better if the overall solution was easier to use.

The solution is a black box for us. I'm working on it for maintenance and check everything - check the cables, check the relationship between cables to serve this product, et cetera. Sometimes our customer needs to extract some information from the system via our extension for the database to extract this info directly from the database and not from the system. 

We didn't interact more on the database so the use cases are mostly related to the extraction of information in tables. To check the database status, we have another system, a geosystem, so we check the replication between the two systems. Some operations are a little more than general development on the database.

The database is very easy to use. 

We are making some automation scripts. We are working to minimize and reduce the logs and it's very helpful to be able to have the capabilities to do this.

The solution is very stable. 

Technical support is helpful.

We didn't have any complaints about Oracle Database except for the vulnerability we see in some aspects of the product. Sometimes we receive some vulnerability email from the security team and it's sent to the product owner to check the vulnerability. Sometimes they tell us we can't upgrade the database for now as there's a vulnerability Oracle couldn't find a solution for. After one month or two, they're back to us and let us know they've solved it. They need to do a better job of patching security issues they find and making those patches happen faster.

The solution is a bit expensive.

I have an intermediate amount of experience with Oracle. I've used it for a while. I've been used it for about a year.

The stability of the solution is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable.

The solution is very scalable. Ours was managing about 5,000 servers all over Egypt. The performance and historical transaction on sites is good, and if you need more storage on your database, you can do so with relative ease.  

We have 200 users logged in at any given time.

Support is very good. If I have an issue, I simply open a case with Oracle. They are very helpful and responsive. We're satisfied with the support. They've been good.

We did previously use Microsoft SQL. We found it to be very fast and responsive. We're still using it, actually. It is the database for our distribution.

I cannot speak to the implementation process. I'm not sure how easy or difficult the setup is as I did not handle any aspect of it.

That said, if I have the manual and steps for installation, I can install it.

We have three people on staff that can handle maintenance. They're all engineers.

We had a vendor that handled the implementation for us.

I find the pricing to be high. They should work to lower it if possible. 

We pay a yearly licensing and support fee to Oracle. I can't speak to the exact costs, however.

I can't recall the exact version number of the solution, however, it's my understanding that it is version 11.

I'd rate the product at a nine out of ten. We've been quite pleased with the overall capabilities so far.

I'd recommend the solution to other users and companies. We've been very happy with its capabilities overall.