Oracle Database Reviews

The most valuable features for us in our experience has definitely been the security and reliability it brings to our environment. We know that our data is safe and secure and that Database is incredibly stable. There's a peace of mind that it affords us.

Because it's secure and reliable, we can have confidence that we can just go on with business as usual. We're able to focus our efforts on more important aspects of our business instead of worrying about threat protection and lost data.

I've been very happy with the progression of the product. One thing I would like to see is a better feature set for pluggable databases, that is, the multi-tenancy of the database. It's still in its infancy at the moment and I'd like to see in 13c a big leap forward with better support for multi-tenancy.

I've been working with Oracle databases for over 16 years.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

Database has always been solid. There's been a couple little buggy things at the beginning, because I was working with version 7, but from 8i onwards, everything was solid.

There's absolutely no problem scaling it. They give you plenty of options and a lot of best practice in order to be able to do that.

I've always been very happy with Oracle support. I think probably the one thing that I'd like to be able to have is more input into is the feature set for the next release.

The most valuable features of Oracle Database are that it's very powerful, very reliable, and very fast. Those really are the main attributes that any organization should be looking for from a database solution. Can it take the data you throw at it, can you count on it to be available, and will it provide you enough speed so you can work efficiently?

It's a very secure database so that we don't have any worries about security on the database side. We host a lot of data for our customer. It's very important to have a database that's secure and reliable.

It's a very expensive solution. There are other, less expensive products out there, but you wouldn't be getting such a premium product.

We have no issues with deployment.

We have absolutely no issues with the stability. That's one of the primary advantages of Oracle Database.

We've been able to scale it just fine for our needs.

The initial setup was very easy and very straightforward. It's not a difficult product to stand up, and combined with our technical knowledge, the setup was very easy.

We implemented it ourselves with our in-house team.

It's very expensive. You pay a premium price for a premium product.

We didn't really consider other database solutions despite the price because we use other Oracle products already.

Just make sure you read up on it and plan ahead.

The most valuable feature is its ability to be tuned so that we can gather data and our developers can build their code in it without too much hassle. Oracle Database has a lot of memory and other parameters that you can specify in the .ORA file and tune.

They should make new releases more stable, rather than waiting for the product to mature and releasing patches. Also, they should improve their tech support so that it's more consistent.

Also, I'm looking for more security. They give you a lot of options, but they all cost extra. I'm hoping that in the enterprise edition they include some of those options at no extra cost as standard features. It's already expensive as it is.

I've been using it for 20 years.

We've had no issues deploying it.

The newer releases always have bugs and issues, but as the releases mature, they become stable. Take 11g R1, for example, which is a good product, but it initially contained a lot of bugs and kinks. 11g R2 was a lot more stable with many of the issues worked out. There were still some bugs, but they were minor and fixed with patches.

We have used it in rack environments where we use it with Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Grid, and we can scale it.

Technical support, in our experience, is both good and bad. There have been times when we log an issue and the feedback we get or the support we're getting are just not good. But the there are times when within an hour or two we get the right feedback. So I guess it all depends on the engineer who evaluates the ticket and receives it and works on it.

Oracle Database is definitely a great tool. If you're looking for a database technology or tool, you should definitely use Oracle Database. There are many other databases in the market, but I think Oracle has really matured its product over the last ten years. It has a lot of options that do cost extra, but there are a lot of security options in there that are built-in, such as encryption, transportable table spaces, etc.

One of the features that stands out to me is the Real Application Cluster. This gives us the ability to have active-active clustering functionality. We can scale horizontally to multiple database servers and instances, which gives us both High Availability and load balancing, great features both.

There's also the new In-Memory feature that allows us to do a lot of OLAP transactions.

As with any organization, before we embark on anything, we have to look at the ROI as well as the ability of a particular tool. Database is rock solid, which, of course, affects our ability to do work and provide customer service. We're a mutual fund company, so stability is really key in providing satisfactory customer service. Oracle Database really gives us this key factor from an IT perspective.

We'd like to see a few more security improvements. Security right now is a very, very big issue. Oracle is doing a very good job with security enhancements with each now releases, the latest of which, I think, is 12c release 2. But I'd really like for it to have a lot more security enhancements that are added to Database, rather than pushing the enhancements into some of their other tools that you have to buy in order to be able to take advantage of those enhancements and functionalities. Like I said, security really is key for us as we do a lot of encryption, so it would be best if the additional security features and enhancements were part of Database rather than part of some other product we'd have to buy.

Deploying it was no problem. We had no issues with it at all.

Stability is not an issue at all. Oracle is a database company and Database, as their flagship RDBMS, is the product at the highest level of maturity.

It's scaled to our needs.

We have premier support from Oracle, so we have a very good relationship with technical support.

It's the most mature Oracle product, so setting up the RDBMS was straightforward.

Despite the fact that it's the most expensive of the RDBMS solution available, there's a reason why Oracle Database has the largest market share. It's the best there is. If there's another RDBMS vendor that provides some functionality that Oracle doesn't, then you'd really have to evaluate what your true ROI will be. From my perspective, though, Database is worth it.

It's enterprise-wide and can handle big databases. Also, it performs automatic backup recovery and database management and monitoring, both of which are extremely useful.

We've reduced our time monitoring the database and, instead, spent more time researching and improving our system.

The portal site needs to be improved, as sometimes it's very slow. They also need to improve their critical problem resolution, especially error ORA-60000. I hoped that they'd be able to reduce those types of errors by now.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We very seldom have stability issues. It's been really stable so far.

It's a scalable solution that comes at a cost.

Issues are registered through their portal where we login our tickets. Sometimes, it's a bit slow and their response is a bit average unless it's Severity One, in which case the response time is really quick, about 1 or 2 hours. Otherwise, if it's Severity Three or below, it can probably take up to one day. Sometimes the development team needs to look into the issues.

Database was already set up when I joined, but I haven't heard that it was particularly complex.

Oracle needs to reduce the licensing cost as it's getting more expensive.

You have to really know the Oracle version type that you're working on, especially with the new Oracle chassis which is running on multi-tenant architecture. That is very important if you are, just like our company, on MTA, multi-tenant architecture. We have to really know the inside out how it works before we can actually support and maintain it. So be well prepared for it.

I think that the most valuable feature of Oracle Database is the knowledge base that's available. If there's a bug, I can find the solution in the knowledge base. If I need to know why something's happened, or whether there's a workaround, I can find the solution in the knowledge base. There's a wealth of information available there, and I live and die by it.

Our core business relies on its ability to work with RDBS. You could say that we make all our money by using Oracle. Since version 8i, it's been my bread and butter. I love the product and use it every day.

The features that are there, it usually works perfectly. The new features, you see that it takes some time to pick up and sometimes they break things they really shouldn't.

I've been using it since Oracle 8i, which was 18 years ago.

We've had no issues with deployment.

Oracle has added a new optimizer option to do some very fancy stuff, but it provides the wrong results. And at this stage in the life of the product, wrong results should never happen. That's why I have Database -- to get the correct results.

It scales very well. With NoSQL though, there are scalability issues because it just cannot spin up. But I've found that with Hadoop and AWS, you can spin up to 2,000 new nodes and it works fine. You can't do that with Oracle, but it's legacy software nowadays.

Technical support is fine. Fortunately, we don't have any priority-one issues within our business that depend on Oracle Database. For minute-to-minute operations, I get a good enough response from technical support.

As a vendor, we support older versions and the customer will never touch them. I really don't need to ask technical support for a fix, I know that the customers will not use it.

We haven't used a different RDBMS since I started with the company.

The initial setup was done before I started my current position.

The implementation was done before I started my current position.

For us, the most valuable features of Database have been its robustness, reliability, and the fact that it's highly tuneable.

It also allows us to support large applications and to also tune them properly. Database really provides us with great performance and stability.

I really wish that Oracle had included pluggable databases in the 12c Enterprise Edition. I can understand not putting it into the Standard Edition, but it should be included in the Enterprise Edition at no additional cost.

My other gripe is their licensing practices of the database engine. If I run a VMware infrastructure, and a lot of people do, Oracle makes me pay for licenses for the entire farm. It's very expensive and I don't think it's fair that they'd charge for it.

I've been using Oracle Database for twenty-five years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's way better now than it used to be, but, yes, it is very stable. All of our large applications use Database because of its stability.

The scalability of Database is good. I do have to say, however, that SQL Server for the Database engine is better if you want to run a bunch of small databases. My gripe about 12c is that they will make you pay extra for it even if you've already licensed Enterprise Edition. Also, it's not as easy to tune the pluggables because the underlying infrastructure is non-tuneable. Whereas with SQL Server, there's a little more flexibility. I run both engines: my SQL Server databases are for my little stovepipe stuff and my Oracle Database is for my big, enterprise-level stuff.

In my experience, technical support is really good, as well as the knowledge base. With the KB, I'm usually able to find the answers myself. And, Oracle has automated it to the point where it's very intuitive and helpful. I would, however, like to be able to call someone if needed like I used to. I remember having to wait for long period of time, but it's nice to talk to a person who can help.

From a storage and memory perspective, 11g is great. We also tried to install 12c on our machines, but we weren't happy about it because there were two version of it and we weren't ready to use the required plugins. We'll go to 12c next year, but I'd like to know whether we can go straight to 13c, which is already out.

11g has helped increase the performance of our database. We're also able to maintain it easier and better.

It's really not very user-friendly. Once installed and set up, there are still a lot of other steps we've had to take to get it functioning the way we want and need it to.

Deploying it required a lot of customization steps.

The stability is better than with 10g, in our experience with it.

The scalability is OK, but now that we're pushing 30GB of data per hour, there are problems with applications at the OIS level not handling the data correctly.

I performed the full setup myself but winged the rest. I had problems with the patches even though the upgrade installation went well. I spoke with DBA's in other companies and they had no problems with the patches. I still haven't come up with a solution.

It's a good product, better than older versions.

For me as a DBA, the most important features are the partitioning option, active data guard, and security options. All of these are very useful for my daily workflow.

Oracle Database is the core of our enterprise information system, which I maintain.

I think Oracle 12c has a lot of new functionality that has never been in the previous versions I work with, 8i to 11g, for example, master-slave architecture where you can plug and run multiple databases from a single master database as well as the ability to create a container database (CDB) that contains all the Oracle-level data and data dictionary.

I have used it since 2000, so more than 15 years.

All the issues I dealt with during deployment have been related to other applications and not the Database itself. All of the issues were fixed by programmers during the deployment and test implementation phases.

All the issues I dealt with in regards to instability have been related to other applications and not the Database itself. All of the issues were fixed by programmers during the deployment and test implementation phases.

All the issues I dealt with in scaling it have been related to other applications and not the Database itself. All of the issues were fixed by programmers during the deployment and test implementation phases.

Oracle has an excellent knowledge base and, using this, I fixed over 90% of issues myself.

I have experience with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and 2012, but my main activity is Oracle RDBMS.

Initial setup steps are very straightforward and clearly set out in the documentation.

I have experience with implementation both through a vendor team and in-house. I would strongly recommend to have a very clear understanding of how an applied system works because the most issues you will have to deal with are with the applied logic, and not with the Database itself.

It depends on applied information system and what kind of RDBMS features and options have been used by your development team or by the vendor.

If you want to have a high-performing, stable, secure, and scalable system, you will choose Oracle Database.

Cloudera Hadoop provides the scalable data architecture organizations need to manage increasing data volumes, though not the intuitive GUI for business users. Oracle Big Data Discovery (BDD) provides business users the ability to explore and analyze that Hadoop cluster to uncover data of interest.

The scalable data storage of Hadoop is the most critical feature, but without Oracle Big Data Discovery that data is difficult for business users to access without significant IT support. BDD relies on Spark and Hive to function so those are the next most valuable features of Cloudera Hadoop for me.

Using Oracle Endeca Information Discovery has enabled our clients to search and explore unstructured data so they can answer unexpected questions as soon as they come up. This has been a game changer since it dramatically reduces the delay when new data volumes are introduced, or when new business questions are identified and need to be answered.

Hadoop as a big data repository is difficult for non-technical users to access but provides a potential gold mine of data insight. Oracle Big Data Discovery's ability to let business users explore that large volume of data gives them a significant advantage.

Oracle Big Data Discovery allows business users to interact with data in Hadoop and to transform it into a different format on the Hadoop cluster. This proprietary format can sit within the Hadoop cluster, but is not fault tolerant and query load is not distributed using native Hadoop technologies.

The more BDD can leverage those technologies the more robust and responsive it’s analytics will be. The second point is that when users identify and transform data of interest they do so directly, meaning they do not need to wait on IT development. However, the transformations are not especially complex.

Leveraging R at some point as a user drive interface within Oracle Big Data Discovery would allow them to do more advanced data analysis. Currently this depends on Hadoop programming which is not a technical barrier, but is not accessible to business users.

There are some details around BDD's configuration that should be improved as the product is refined. The main technical constraint is that Oracle Big Data Discovery is designed to work with subsets of the data on Hadoop. Although the record numbers can be increased it’s performance is impacted.

This means if you have one billion records in your Hadoop cluster, you might still only ingest a few million for analysis at a time. The positive thing is that analysis can be throwaway so you can do this multiple times.

I've used BDD for more or less six months, since v1.0 was released. Its predecessor, Oracle Endeca Information Discovery I've used for approximately four years. Cloudera Hadoop, which I've used for just over a year, sits underneath Oracle Big Data. This product provides business users with a web browser interface to the Hadoop cluster which I think is a critical gap in the Hadoop offering. BDD leverages Hive and Spark to provide users with the ability to search, explore, and visualize data from a Hadoop cluster. This is the area we are most engaged with as a professional services company.

Oracle Big Data Discovery depends on either Cloudera or Hortonworks Hadoop which are both stable and scalable base deployments.

As with most big corporations engaging with Oracle on technical support can be challenging. As a new product that seems to have a higher priority hopefully their support and development of Big Data Discovery will improve from what it was with Endeca Information Discovery.

Tableau as a tool for business users to visualize data is very popular, but the ability of Oracle Big Data Discovery to provide built in text enrichment, native support for unstructured data, and a very robust engine for search gave it some advantages to support data discovery that superseded the strengths of Tableau for data visualization. Solr provided excellent search, but not the same ease of support for text enrichment or interactive visualizations.

The initial setup is relatively straightforward, but as a new product in the market the support community is not very evolved so only a few organizations possess any real product knowledge.

As a professional service company implementation work on client sites is done by us. Regardless of who does the implementation, be sure it aligns to how your organization strategically intents to use the product. And be prepared to include training as part of the implementation to enable your target audience to take advantage of it.

Licensing costs are currently very competitive as Oracle looks to establish a market presence for BDD. Organizations that are not seeing tremendous return value on their Hadoop investment or are struggling with accessibility should take advantage of the early pricing options.

Aim to roll it out to a large cross section of your business users and structure the procedures to encourage throwaway analytics. Creating traditional dashboards and static reporting can be done with it, but this depends on the structure which makes them inherently inflexible to change. The strengths of Hadoop to store unstructured data and the ability of it to explore, search, and visualize that data means users can be rapidly exploring their data.