Oracle Database In-Memory Reviews

Performance. That's probably the number one.

When we use it for OLTP, which is the Online Transaction Processing, the response for the end-user is pretty fast, which is a good thing, especially if the user is looking at a website, the response time is really micro milliseconds as opposed to waiting a few seconds for that page to load.

I think it still goes back to the user benefiting the most out of this, it's basically a good customer experience, the product.

Nothing right now.

It is pretty stable.

It scales really well.

We had to scale it along with the rest of the ecosystem, not just this in particular, but the infrastructure as well. We had to scale both of them.

We had to involve them just because we ran into a couple of issues and they've been resolved in a timely manner. Pretty good.

No, we always needed something like this, and I've looked at Microsoft, they have a similar solution, I think they have something similar,

It's pretty straight-forward. It's actually more of an inbuilt core functionality as opposed to have us to go through an implementation process.

We did evaluate a few other vendors, but again this wasn't a product on it's own. It's part of the bigger ecosystem. So the decisions are for other reasons.

Try it out first. See if it meets your expectations and go from there.

I mainly use this solution for business analytics and intelligence.

The most valuable feature is that Database In-Memory is more consistent and faster than traditional databases as it requires fewer CPUs to process instructions. Another valuable feature is that we can zero data loss with this solution because there is no data loss when there is a loss of power or the RAM crashes, as with traditional databases.

In the next release, Oracle should include column store or advanced query optimization so a database can be optimized by enabling analytic queries to run faster.

I've been using Database In-Memory for two to three years.

Database In-Memory is reliable, performs very well, and requires very little maintenance.

This solution is easy to scale.

Oracle's technical support is very good.

Positive

The initial setup was simple.

We used an in-house team along with some documentation and help from Oracle's website.

Database In-Memory is priced a bit higher than its competitors like Microsoft. The Enterprise edition has no additional costs, the in-memory features come included.

I would rate Database In-Memory nine out of ten.

The most valuable features are the performance and speed.

The key thing for us is that we can meet our customer SLAs because of the performance and the response time we get.

The second thing is, personally, being a database person, I like Oracle Database In-Memory because of the backing of the support. If something goes wrong, I can call support anytime. That's one of the key reasons.

A lot of new technologies have been coming in to the market in recent years. For example, SPARC, and other analytics languages. Most of the legacy databases don’t have that good connections or connectors to those. It's still a challenge to efficiently use them. I don't know about small data, but we have large data. Especially, if you have a large data, then it's not very efficient. We don't have the tweaks to buffer it or stream it properly. Those are the kinds of things I think could be done.

Stability has been pretty OK. There have been some issues. Support was able to help us out with some configuration.

It scales well for our needs.

I've been an Oracle customer with different companies. I’ve worked with them for almost 10 years now. One of the key things that stands out for Oracle is the support, because I also work with other database vendors. That's the biggest differentiator. Even if I have some issue when I get up at 1 AM, I know I can call on support and I know I'll be able to get my problem solved.

We looked at other vendors before we started using this product, but because we were already an Oracle customer, using their database, it made sense to be in Oracle In-Memory.

I suggest looking mostly at the interfaces; that is the key. Even if the performance is good, but the interfaces are not right, to the application or to the front end, that could be an issue.

We’re really happy with Oracle Database In-Memory.

My solution has a big database with terabytes of data and we use Database In-Memory for a lot of our data. Normally, we partition it and create big tables, but we can use In-Memory for data that we use every day or every hour. We put some partitions in In-Memory from some tables and we use that. It normally has good performance.

Normally, every database server uses hard disks. In-Memory has a feature, apart from its database, which is very good. When we start our server, all your data needs loading memory. We can use that. It's a very good feature. I think they added this feature in 2019. We can mount memory in the partition, create partitions in there, and create tablespace from that spot to share. It's a really good feature. We use it a lot.

We use some partitions in In-Memory. We have a very large table and a low dose. It is very expensive in data to load all of them into In-Memory. It takes up more memory slots in the server, as well as a lot of RAM. We use the last partitions on the table. We always need to create a script and make a schedule that can load the last partition In-Memory. Oracle doesn't have features to do this automatically. I would like them to allow us to load last partitions, as well as other table partitions, in In-Memory. I think a good feature would do that automatically, letting you see a table, load a large partition, and monitor loading memory. It's quite a good feature.

I have been using this version for about four months.

We have used this feature for four months and it's stable. I used to load one terabyte of data in my memory servers each time. I think it worked okay. I don't have any problem for now.

I live in Iran. Iran is sanctioned by the US government so Oracle can't provide any services to us. I study on my own. I use Oracle documentation and watch YouTube videos. I don't have any company to support us.

It is very easy to deploy. I always work in Linux, Oracle Linux. If you want to work from the GNOME GUI, it's really simple. You must state a parameter in Linux and then use their installer. Click next, next, next, then finish. It's simple. In Oracle 80 and 90, we have an installation system in a common UI. It's very simple. You must have the prerequisites and after that, install RPM in just one comment. Check your configuration and set up the database. It's simple.

Deployment in the GUI version, if you want to use that, is I think 14 to 20 minutes. In the command line, it would take 10 to 15 minutes. I can't remember exactly, but something close to that.

Oracle is the best database, but I love open-source software. Oracle always has the first original features for three or four years and we use them because they are stable and we can buy in a large scale and use it for our office. It has no problems. I think Oracle is ten out of ten.

About Oracle Database In-Memory, in particular, I would rate it as eight out of ten. It's a new feature. I think it's improved from the last version three years ago.

Oracle's new features and data are very useful for us for storing data, loading it, etc. Oracle features based on processes are good. In Oracle, we just have four functions based on data types, but in post-production, we have more than ten functions. That is very useful for us. We'll add more functions and features like index and categorization based on data type, output, and large data. That would be very useful.

Oracle has a lot of features embedded. In my opinion, Oracle In-Memory offers a lot of improvements in database performance specially for data warehouses and analytics workloads. Combined with Exadata, it makes a solution that will deliver the best performance related to the volume of data.

As I’m very involved in database security, I can tell say that Advanced Security Option and Database Vault are most valuable features for me because I can propose them to my customers to deliver the best security options for their databases.

Each time I've implemented the In-Memory option, the improvements have been on the performance side. This option offers a way to drastically reduce batch duration with a minimum of work because we only need to enable it on columns we choose, test batch performance, and that’s it. We can do this cycle of work less than 10 times and the job is completed.

They need to improve the Decision Support System with analytics workloads.

I've used Oracle Database since 2001, and I officially used the In-Memory option since its general availability in June 2014. But, as I’ve been a beta tester for the Oracle version that delivered this option, I can say that I've used it since the beginning of 2014.

There have been no issues deploying it.

The product is stable. Of course, at this level of software, there are always some bugs. But, each time I have had to implement it, the bugs weren’t very problematic and I've always found a patch or a workaround.

It scales to the needs of my customers.

Technical support is useful with the My Oracle Support website. But when I have to open a service request, I have to find a solution on my own because technical support usually doesn't understand my problem or they always ask for the same logs, same questions, and I ultimately waste my time.

I tested the In-Memory equivalent in DB2 or SQL Server 2014, but they both have limitations in their uses. SAP HANA is one of the most concurrent of Oracle’s solution, but I have never used it.

The deployment was very easy because we just have to set a volume of memory as the In-Memory area, and the enable In-Memory for specific columns. This part is longer, but for me, it’s more a tuning issue than a deployment issue. Deploying Oracle In-Memory is very easy and takes only a few minutes.

Implementing Oracle In-Memory is very easy, but the tuning phase is mandatory to optimize it.

We primarily use the solution as an email database.

Overall, it's a very good solution.

The application development is very user-friendly. 

The SQL is great in Oracle. If you use other databases, you often have to find another syntax and develop in other languages.

The user interface is great.

The pricing could be improved. It would ideal if it was more reasonable.

The design isn't that great. It's kind-of buggy and doesn't seem to cater to the Korean market.

There seems to be issues relating to migration. It's difficult to migrate off of it if you need to.

I've probably been using the solution for about a decade. It's been about ten years now.

The stability has caused us some issues. We've dealt with bugs in the past. It's not flawless.

The scalability is pretty decent. We've had clients that have scaled in the past, however, they didn't use Oracle to do so. That said, I believe it scales.

We don't have contract-level technical support. In the past, we've used MOS support at oracle.com. It was just for a service request. They utilize more of an open-source system and it relies on open-source technical knowledge. It would be more helpful if Oracle could directly answer our queries. However, that's just not the case.

We've found another similar solution called Ignite that we are looking at implementing.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's nearly always a cloud environment, which makes things fairly easy. Everything is already set up for the most part. Companies that want to utilize In-Memory just need to work with the existing cloud infrastructure.

The product is quite expensive. Organizations should be prepared for a rather high price tag. Our clients may end up moving to an open-source option to lower costs.

We're Oracle partners. We've been partners with Oracle for a long time.

Our IT department first changed from on-premises to cloud. Our clients seem to like a hybrid deployment model. Now they are considering looking for other solutions that may not be as expensive or may even be open-source.

I'm not really a database expert. My understanding is that some customers want to make a product from the portal website using the In-Memory DB. Others tend to want to migrate from an Oracle In-Memory database to another email database. It's difficult when users want to migrate off of Oracle or simply to another Oracle solution. They tend to run into a lot of issues. Personally, this solution wouldn't be my top choice, as it makes things difficult.

There are a lot of alternative email database solutions. I'd just advise other companies to take a look at the options to see which would work best for their use case.

That said, while we migrated to another solution, it's still a pretty good tool, and issues just seem to arise if you are migrating. 

Overall, I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. If the pricing was more reasonable, and the migration was easier, I'd rate it higher. 

I cannot imagine IT today without Oracle databases. Oracle has basically delivered their data revolution with relational databases and their constant development and innovation going into the cloud.

They are coming up with more improvements than we actually want. If you ask most of the customers, they are happy with what they had 10 or 20 years back. The company has a need to make more money or beat the competition, so they constantly come up with these new features. They say these are cool features to have, but I don’t think they are needs. We don't need all the upgrades, practically speaking.

However, I am interested in the analytics of the data that is used for new research. Customers do need some of that information.

I have used this solution for 15 or 16 years.

This is a very stable solution. You always have kinks with any solution, but they have awesome support, depending upon how much money you pay them. You need to have platinum service to get good support. Otherwise, you'll have to struggle a bit.

The scalability is good, of course. Oracle is known for its scalability.

We have different levels of support. What makes the difference is how persistent you are. If you demonstrate that you have a lot at stake, then you will get good support. If you are very casual, then you will get slack support. This is the case with anybody.

The installations and upgrades are complex. It's a complicated, complex product, so you definitely need technology experts. You can’t just pick up anybody from the street, like a new graduate, to do this work. You definitely need inside help. You need expertise because this is complex technology. You're talking about Data Guard, which is a complex technology. You do need experts for help.

We are going to be an Oracle shop for a long, long time.

When looking for a vendor, I look for expertise, how quickly they can roll out the product, and the cost of implementation.

The stability of the platform is the most valuable feature. The solution can support large amounts of data once the architecture is in place.

The solution could benefit from AI improvements.

Technical support could be improved.

The usability of the solution could be better. They should make it easier in terms of system administration and for getting examples of statistics from the databases. An interface or dashboard for statistics would be better. Right now, we're using cloud controls to do that, but it's not good enough.

I've used this solution for the past five months and was an Oracle Database administrator from 2000 to 2005.

The database is very stable.

The scalability of the solution is very good. It's able to support large amounts of data.

Technical support is below our expectations currently. It could be improved.

The solution was already in place when I began to work for the company. I don't know if they previously used a different solution or not.

We have ULA agreements with commission in place with Oracle. The pricing is okay for now.

We use the on-premises deployment model in the virtualization environment.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If technical support was better and usability was improved, I'd rate it higher. It's the best solution on the market right now, but it's more for big data. For us, it's the best solution we can get for our specific needs.