Oracle Database as a Service Reviews

We primarily use this solution for business applications. I was working for a company and they provided software as a service. We were serving applications to our customers.

For example, we were working locally on a system using Oracle. Then another company would need access to a different application and they would come to us to supply it. As a developer, I was using this solution to develop delivery systems principally as a convenience for our customers.

It does more of what a company like ours needs because it is a product that knows the business of data and data management.

The feature that was most valuable to me in this product — it will be different for different types of users — is that I could develop all the logic inside the database itself. There were no additional integrations.

The solution would also help manage the traffic on the network.

I don't believe that any product is a perfect solution. I believe that each product has some minor disadvantage about which customers need to be able ready to work with or workaround. It may not be the fault of the product but lack of compatibility, the preferences of the user or lack of knowledge of existing features. I think these can all be the case in not maximizing what Oracle already has.

Because of my preference for and knowledge of Toad and the way I work with Oracle, I am not up to date on all of the tools included in this product. But I think if we have all of the features needed as developers already in the product, Oracle will be much better. For example, something very important for all developers that could already be available now in Oracle products is weighting the data. This is a very important technical concern for data centers.

The code that developers use is built up in some instructions, so I need to understand how each instruction is executed and how the current state of the code or data application is affecting the transactions. I found that this type of analysis was difficult in Oracle itself, so I used another product — like Toad — that would give me the ability to debug all the code instruction by instruction to really understand what is going on. It's quite an important feature. If it is available in Oracle now it is not very good or well described. This is a problem that needs a solution.

If it is already there and the vendor does not know about it or understand it, I think there is a big issue. The difference is that to get the most out of the technology, the developers really need to know about the new features and how to find and use them. This is something about Oracle that I think is not very good.

Along with that idea, I think that Oracle might do a little bit improve their interface as it is not very user-friendly and I have heard other developers say similar things. I didn't use myself because it would not help me as much or as quickly as other products to develop functions and to develop other features like reporting. I would have to learn a whole different way.

The solution has good integration with the hardware and it is a stable product.

As a transactional database, I think this is quite a scalable product in a variety of ways. 

Any time I have had the need to use the technical support, it was at least very good but mostly it was excellent.

I previously used Microsoft and if you compare Oracle to Microsoft SQL server, I believe Oracle is so much better than Microsoft SQL Server that they are not comparable. So, I obviously prefer working with the Oracle product. The reason for the difference is probably that Oracle is basically a database company and they focus on this aspect of their business. Microsoft, having many products, is not so focused on this competition with Oracle and they are more focused on Microsoft NET Frameworks and Microsoft Office. Oracle itself has many products right now, but all of them are database products. This concentration is why Oracle is number one in transactional databases.

I am not the one who would be responsible for these installations alone. I would be doing the development. As it requires a team and customizations, I think it has to be considered somewhat complex to set up if you look at the whole picture. It is not as easy as starting an executable and waiting for it to finish running.

We are a SaaS (Software as a Service) house, so we do our own installation, monitoring, and management.

We are a value add software as a service house so we are not really paying the cost of the licenses, the customer is the one who pays month-to-month. The customer is paying the money for their Oracle database in our case. We only use the product for development and testing to be able to deliver the services.

For the customer, our service becomes an advantage. So the price may seem high, but for them, it is reasonable and not so high as it could cost them much more to deploy separately. The price corresponds to the quality of the product and services they receive in return.

We use the on-premises solution because the customer has to have their own environment. In our case, for our clients, that's one of the big advantages.

A potential issue might be getting used to the Oracle interface. Personally, I didn't use the interface provided by Oracle. In that way, the interface was not a problem for me because I used to use a third-party application like Toad that maybe more people are already familiar with and I think is easy for me to use already.

We are using the same server software application. I don't know if Oracle provided database software and SQL developer or not. But for myself, I needed an application to develop the features and functions on the Oracle Database.

While I prefer and recommend Oracle, many other factors are involved in making decisions. If all the factors are the same and there are no limitations for the cost or other issues for adopting Oracle compared with other products, I think Oracle would always be a better choice.  

A lesson I learned is that you have to always verify the virtual data when you are acting as a software as a service house for the customer. Oracle is part of our winning team. It may not be the only product that we use to achieve the result.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a seven to eight depending a little on how you use it. For us, it is an eight because it is very good at what it does and we use other tools to make it do what we want it to do. We don't fight with the one product to try and make it do everything.

I have mostly used Oracle Database as a Service in the banks I have worked with.

I like the solution's performance and ease of development.

Nowadays, scaling is very easy with AWS, Postgres, or MySQL solutions. Also, AWS takes care of a few things. However, we need to do everything manually in Oracle. It would be better if we could have a little bit of automation or a chance for autoscaling with Oracle Database as a Service.

I have been working with Oracle Database as a Service for almost 15 to 20 years.

Oracle Database as a Service is a very stable solution.

In my previous organizations, we had thousands of developers for Oracle Database as a Service.

The solution's technical support is good.

Positive

Other than Oracle Database as a Service, I have worked with Microsoft and SAP. Oracle Database as a Service is better than other solutions because it is easy to work with, and we can use many tools to work with it.

I would definitely recommend Oracle Database as a Service to users looking for performance or ease of tool handling and database handling.

Overall, I rate Oracle Database as a Service a nine out of ten.

The primary use is the leverage DBaaS (Database as a Service) using the Oracle Cloud solution without having to build the database a step at a time.  Getting a pre-built Oracle database can be beneficial for testing for functionality, new development, but mostly the ability to quickly build different sizes of Oracle systems without a large effort.  The ability to resize things is also an advantage over other cloud solutions.  There is also an Autonomous Database.

I think some of the biggest benefits is if there's a consolidation potential, or putting things up in the cloud where I can consolidate many databases into one. Also a location potential is helpful; if I have customers in Germany and China and in the U.S. but my IT is located in Chicago, I could go to the Oracle Cloud and now maybe I can put replicas using Oracle's multi-tenant database. The cloud makes this a lot easier to actually do a clone of a pluggable database, but I could just take that pluggable database and clone it to China. I can clone it to Germany and then I could have one here in the United States. The data is closer to the person. There's also EU privacy laws that I have to keep and it makes it a lot easier to secure things in one location as well. Careful though, some laws require you to take responsibility for what you put in the cloud.  We also benchmarked Oracle ADW vs. AWS Redshift & Oracle was much faster.

Being able to go to go to the website: cloud.oracle.com/tryit and get $300+ in free trial credits is a great way to explore the technology (you can also go to cloud.oracle.com/database to just try database as a service (DBaaS). The cloud is something accelerates efforts to interface with Big Data and IOT, but it takes an educated buyer to implement the right pieces at the right time. The cloud gives people the ability to leverage big data from non-Oracle sources including Hadoop and Hive, quickly deploy a development test or simple application, and to leverage the interfaces to other companies and to use mobile apps. I think the downside is it's causing people pain as it compresses how fast they need to learn about it and effectively move the parts of their system that are better suited in the cloud. I think that's the biggest issue right now. Some of the features that are out there for database as a service on the cloud, if you want to have an encrypted backup in the cloud or a test database, it's nice to have a backup that's offsite or a system where you can test new features. Are you going to put your backup in a lock-box at the local bank or are you going to put it on some other cloud? With Oracle, you can send it with RMAN encrypted backup straight to the Oracle Cloud and it's there when you need it. If you had to fail-over for some reason when you use Oracle Cloud, and you have an Exadata in-house, Oracle has an Exadata in the cloud that you could fail right over to (this allows either a CAPEX or OPEX financial event). Maybe you have some big data where you don't have enough servers and you know exactly what you want hardware wise, well, you're familiar with that Exadata performance so you know exactly what you're going to get in the cloud since the hardware is similar to what you have on-site.

Features that people want the most are already there. One of them is Oracle In-Memory which allows you to put things in a columnar data store in memory with Oracle's 12c (12.1.0.2+). You could have an in-memory database. You could have columnar data, which is compressed and in-memory (in the in-memory column store) or if you're doing transactional data, it's in the buffer cache (memory) so it's very fast to do that transactions. It's a different memory area altogether. When I look at the cloud, you'll need In-Memory more, because you're going to be dealing with larger volumes of data. The second feature that helps is multi-tenancy; Oracle already has this as of 12c Release 1. It is the ability to clone and move things around and maybe do an exchange partition (PDB - Pluggable Database) with one of your vendors or one of your customers out there (given security needs are met). Non-PDBs (or not using multi-tenancy is being deprecated).  Leveraging and testing new features of 12.2 is also beneficial.  Oracle 18c will be beneficial with Snapshot Carousel, PDB switchover,  In-Memory External Tables and Polymorphic Tables.

I think the way that Oracle and other vendors can move people quicker to the cloud is by educating people on the capabilities of the cloud and some of the benefits of the cloud. I think as customers and vendors out there and partners of Oracle look at providing solutions for the cloud, I think people will be more likely to go there, but what I think right now is the biggest hesitancy is there are a lot of other cloud providers don't have any of the features Oracle has. Oracle must let people know that if you have on-site Exadata, now you can have Exadata in the cloud. Easy to move. You've got a lot of data you want to archive? You can move it to a slower, larger server or a faster, smaller server depending on what you want to do. Just the capabilities that they have in-house or in the cloud. Some cost more than others, so effective planning is one big key to success. The cloud is gaining momentum, but the key to success is evaluating it fully and using appropriately.

No.

I did an estimate of all the servers that are out there and Google is obviously very large. Amazon Web Services is very large but if you take Oracle's cloud, which is over 1 exabyte now and then you take the compression that you can do with Oracle, it's actually, probably the largest cloud that's out there right now (many Exabytes). From a scalability standpoint, as big as the world is, as big as you can think, that's how large you can scale your applications.

Oracle's technical support has almost every answer just by searching their support system. I always find what I'm looking for and more.

I think everybody knows that they need to move from on-premise to the cloud. They know the cloud is what's coming next. They know it's way to quickly interface with social media with Big Data very quickly. I think their hesitancy is: where does it fit? Give us the opportunity to do a hybrid cloud so that our staff can be up to date on exactly how this works and I think then they'll move there faster. There are other clouds with MANY hidden costs.  Please hire an expert to consult when evaluating hidden costs on the cloud.  Viscosity North America pays particular attention to these hidden costs.  Viscosity also has an Oracle vs. AWS whitepaper on our website.

I thought it was very easy to setup database as a service (within hours - the second one will take minutes) for testing new features and familiarizing yourself with the flow of things.

We brought a customer that was not in the cloud, all on premise and we put their EBS finances into the Oracle cloud and all their manufacturing was still on site. They were multi-currency. They were multi-country. Initially there was a lot of education that needed to happen. The more education you put forth at the beginning edge of that project, the more likely you're going to be successful in the middle of that project, but cloud projects tend to be shorter in duration and then when you get to the end of that, there's a lot of questions on things that people could do that they couldn't do before they got to the cloud. The 'what ifs' we'll say. What if I could extend my data to all these data sources with big data? Well, they never asked that before because they never could do it before. Now that they're in the cloud, their whole world opens up to what the capabilities are for their company itself. Some of those discussions are interesting after the fact.

It really depends how this is measured.

There are different prices for different architectures - plan wisely and ensure that you look at all the pluses/minuses of each provider!

Some of the criteria for when you're evaluating a cloud, to me, number one is cost, but after that it's SLA (Service Level Agreement - from the cloud provider). Is my data going to be there? Consider a credit card company. They have seven seconds until they're paying some other company because they didn't do the transaction fast enough. Usually it takes them one second to approve your transaction so time and speed is probably the most important thing.

What are some of the criteria people should be looking at? First of all is SLA. Will it be up? The second isL is it going to be on hardware and software that I'm used to? I have a tech staff of 100 people, are they going to be able to do their job when that data's in the cloud? Just being familiar with things. Can it scale? Is it large enough?

Read my 12cR2 book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Oracle-...

How would Oracle rate on a scale of 1 to 10 with cloud solution? I think it depends absolutely on which Oracle cloud solution it is. Some are 10 and some are lower. It depends which architecture you evaluate.

Many people are looking at it now. The main key is get educated. Understand what's out there. I did three sessions at Oracle OpenWorld and Java World in 2017, all of them have cloud. I will do many at Collaborate earlier this year (April 2018) and all of them will have cloud. Why? Because I know it's important and where many things are going to some degree. Whether people are using the 12c database, 18c database, that's one of my talks, I know it's important to be ready for the cloud (the 11g database is also available on the cloud). How you would migrate each database and what multi-tenant does to assist you in that process is an important feature of Oracle. I also have regular sessions on the Internet of Things (IOT) which talks about all these devices that are going to be integrated with your database and big data and obviously cloud plays perfectly to that one.

We primarily are using the solution for clients who want to migrate their applications. We have an on-premises version for testing to see how that would work.

The most valuable aspects of the solution are the general database system resilience and security.

The improvements we require are mostly regarding the documentation and compatibility with other systems or with other non-Oracle technologies. 

Documentation is difficult to find. Since we're experienced with Oracle technology, we have also found many errors in it. Not everything is 100% accurate.

The solution should add functionalities, like database system functions, to speed up the query processing type. Any sort of functions or commands that would give you a faster result would be a welcome improvement. Microsoft Azure, for example, has some building functionalities to fetch big chunks of data and in a very fast way. I haven't seen a similar feature from Oracle. 

Technical support is not very good. Oracle's attitude toward customers, with increasing prices and a general lack of recognition of other technologies, is not ideal.

The level of difficulty in the initial setup varies. Sometimes it's very straightforward, but sometimes it is not. 60% of the time it's pretty straightforward.

Sometimes, for example, we might have previously installed the database in the same environment and there were some dependencies left which damaged the next installation because it was not a fresh install. If you want to uninstall the database, the cleaning of the database and everything associated with it gets a bit tricky. There is no automated process for that.

Deployment is quite fast. You can probably manage a deployment in an hour or less.

We're an integrator. We implement the solution for our clients.

We use the on-premises deployment model. We're currently experimenting with Oracle at the moment.

Currently, customers are looking for and experimenting with various databases. The clients that I've talked to have asked about MySQL or Amazon Aurora Database as well Microsoft Secret Server.

In terms of Oracle, what I've heard from some clients was that the cloud database was a disappointment for them compared to the on-premise database. Some of them were regretful about doing that sort of migration. They told me they were over-promised, and the cloud database didn't deliver. The on-premise databases are quite solid, however. They are very good.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

I'm personally not happy with Oracle, but from a technical standpoint, they have a very solid product.

So from the database perspective, we usually are talking about three important things. So the obvious ones are the multitenancy in the pluggable databases. The second category, I would call it performance, making sure that we are getting the right value from the databases in terms of data access. And the third one is obviously the security. So, we are more interested in implementing solutions that, we are actually excited to see Oracle come in with release two with all the issues we have, from 11g and on. So, 12.1 is there, but we want to see what's coming up in 12c at release two, and we are really excited about multitenancy. The whole security aspect, and then the performance as such.

So from the cloud perspective, I think there are too many vendors out there. One of the things we are excited from the Oracle perspective is their ability to take us off of our backups, the database backup. Using that, they can take us to the cloud and we want to try that out, mostly on their test end, as of now. And once we see how the ROI is, and what kind of a performance we are getting and then also check on how the security is, then we might probably consider going a little bit deeper into low-level production applications, all the way into the business applications.

So right now we are evaluating their trial period with Oracle on migrating in their databases, and we are also excited to use some of their backup and recovery solutions, which basically, you take your database and you run your backups, right now it is running on your local disk, but then we are configuring that to go into the cloud. So one of the cool features we are using from Oracle is the RMAN. It takes a second set of channels, and just take it as a destination and that goes into the cloud. So we can restore it at the same time from either of the options, on-prem or from the cloud. So we are excited to see how that works, because that is something that Oracle has recently come up with.

So we want to see, obviously, besides Oracle databases, what other databases can be provisioned and integrated in the cloud. So if I have to have an application running off of a non-Oracle database, and I have an application and the database running in cloud, which is an Oracle, I want to see if I can integrate them through what kind of a web service, how can I transfer the data? How do I move my processes without having to come back into my on prem and then go back into the secondary cloud? So those are some of the integration points I'm looking at.

And the second important thing I'm looking at is, the overall governance. How Oracle can provide their cloud control and give use the ability to manage the on prem and the off prem cloud services, combined in a single view.

So obviously we did an ROI analysis and a TCU. So, we have seen that the cost is definitely a factor. And security is more important, so that's why we did not press the button on the production yet. So we are piloting with the non-prod to see what kind of security we're going to get, what kind of threats are we going to be exposed to. And once we are satisfied, once we get our sign-off from the management, we might probably pull the trigger. But we are in the evaluation period.

Onboarding: so the Database Cloud, the way we have seen is, so you have a cloud control and you go in and, based on your subscription, you actually get the environment. So once you get the environment, you generate the security keys to establish the network connectivity between the on prem to the public and once we have the provision done, then you can actually encrypt the data on the source side, and move them into the cloud through their cloud control utility. So that's how we migrate them. Now, we haven't done a lot of the big databases yet. So we are piloting on the small ones. So, so far, the pilot ones look good which are close to about 300 to 400 GB databases. But we want to see how that goes with couple of terabytes of databases.

Scalability is number one. Data transfer is number two. And security actually tops, on top of that. And the ability to move the workloads between on-prem and off-prem. So that's one of the big things you are looking at, and if we don't like things, and if you want to push back, and we want to come back to our on-prem, what options do we have? So, can we migrate easily from a public cloud to a private cloud and private cloud to an on-prem cloud, and vice-versa. So, having that ability is a big thing, because we don't want to invest in something where we go to the cloud but we don't know how to come back. So we don't want it to be a one-way street, we want to choose a product that can give us an opportunity to not only go into the cloud, but also in a worst-case scenario, come back out.

So initially we started with Amazon. We tested a little bit, but the security was a big thing for us and the way they handle security is a little different I don't necessarily say it is wrong or bad, it's just that I was not very comfortable having the keys being shared versus in Oracle, the security keys are owned by the customer which is us, as opposed to with the vendor, and that was a prime difference for us. And second thing was, Amazon cloud is more on the infrastructure provisioning and metered. They don't give a database as a service. They do have some options, but being an Oracle customer, we know what Oracle can provide, which is totally a value-add kind of a service, with a lot of different shaders, compared to the others like Amazon or Rackspace or a hundred different partners. But I think it's because we are very close with Oracle, we can see how they can give us those value add services.

So the Database Cloud on Oracle right now, I think it's there, but there is some room to grow. So I wouldn't give them 10 yet. I would hold on to that. Probably eight would be a better option. But I want to see the growth in terms of, not only on the vertical side, I want to see the horizontal growth, in terms of how they can leverage, as I said earlier, integrating with other systems. So, if they can grow both horizontally and vertically, then probably I can give them a 10. But at this time, they are not there yet.

So I would say, anybody who wants to get into the cloud, evaluate your options. Check out your dev and test environments first. Check out your backup as a service, because it's very easy. You just have to set your targets and push your database backups. So try with those two first, and see the difference, and compare that with your other vendors. And see what kind of a response latency you're getting from the cloud. And make the call. I mean, that's what I did, and it was clear.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Database as a Service is that it is managed by the vendor and you do not have to purchase on-premise hardware.

Oracle Database as a Service could improve the provisioning. You have to recreate on-premise hardware environments in the cloud, it was not very intuitive.

I have been using Oracle Database as a Service for approximately four years.

The stability of Oracle Database as a Service is good.

Oracle Database as a Service is scalable.

The support from Oracle Database as a Service is above average.

The initial setup of Oracle Database as a Service is complex.

The price of the solution depends on the scale of how you will use it. 

I rate Oracle Database as a Service a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to manage applications like Office. 

The solution is fast and easy. 

The tool needs to improve its pricing and stability. 

I have been using the product for two years. 

I would rate the product's stability a seven out of ten. We had faced an issue with the Oracle system. 

The solution is scalable. My company has twenty users for the product. 

The tool's setup is easy. 

Our local partner helped us to configure the database. 

The solution is worth its money. 

The tool's licensing is on an yearly basis. 

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We use Oracle Database as a Service primarily to load data and for reporting purposes.

This solution is deployed both on-premises and on the cloud.

The analytics features are the most valuable.

The performance needs improvement.

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

It is a stable solution, and I'd rate the stability at nine out of ten.

I would rate the solution's scalability at six out of ten.

I'd rate Oracle Database as a Service's technical support at eight on a scale from one to ten.

Positive

The initial setup is not too difficult, and on a scale from one to ten with one being the most difficult and ten being the easiest, I'd rate it at eight.

The initial deployment can be done in an hour.

The cost for Oracle Database as a Service is higher than that for other similar solutions.

I would recommend Oracle Database as a Service to those who are considering it and rate it at seven on a scale from one to ten.