Oracle Database Reviews

It's pretty impressive how much data we can manage and how fast we can do it with Oracle DB. The performance is also valuable, especially when compared to MySQL or DB2.

We handle vast amounts of data and we need to access it quickly. Oracle DB allows us to be able to do that. Again, that's impressive to us.

I don't like the user interface. I prefer to work with a console and proper lines, which, for me, is the easier way to operate Oracle DB. The current way that things are done is much more tortuous.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

Oracle DB has been very stable for us, especially since it has provides us with backups. But it needs people to manage it, so you have to pay attention to properly staffing it once implemented.

It's very scalable and, in fact, scales beautifully. All we've had to do is create more than one instance, which is very easy to do.

I had an ORA-0600 error which initially didn't "exist" because it wasn't mapping with technical support. It took them some time to resolve the issue.

The initial setup was easy and straightforward. It required only a few clicks.

We implemented it ourselves at it was so easy to do.

I think it's the best database technology on the market. I recommend it to anyone considering it.

This solution is the corporate base that supports ERP solutions and all our systems. We are customers of Oracle and I'm the CIO. 

There are two valuable features for us; the security of the solution and the availability that this database offers us. With the increased move to digital processes, availability is very important for supporting our business.

The performance could be improved and I think they should work towards providing features that will improve database performance. It would also be helpful if they could come up with something to detect performance problems more easily.

I've been using this solution for 20 years. 

The solution is very stable. Our company has over 1,000 users and we'll keep it at that for the time being. 

The technical support is very good. 

The initial setup is quite straightforward but it requires a professional Oracle database administrator who is an in-house employee.

It's important to evaluate the availability in a corporate database. It's also worth assessing how the database is protected against cyber attacks and how difficult it is to maintain and administer it.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

‎I am deputy head of ICT and we are customers of Oracle. 

This is an extremely reliable solution with very high system resilience. 

Digital support of the product could be improved. 

We've been using this solution for a couple of years. 

We use premium support and there are some difficulties there. It can be complex, particularly when you catch them on a shift change, and there is a change in engineering staff. 

The initial setup was very straightforward. We have a server administrator and database administrator who monitor the solution. We have over 3,000 users in our company. 

I rate this product a 10 out of 10. 

I like the backend robustness of the database and the security capabilities that are inherently in the product.

The adaptability to various APIs is something that needs to be improved.

Also, the programming interface needs some improvement.

I have been using Oracle Database for five years.

We typically use Oracle Suite for our databases and Microsoft for our OS platforms. 

We are also considering a partial move to Microsoft Azure. This is our plan but it has not yet happened.

We are currently evaluating solutions to purchase. Some of the solutions that we are considering are AlgoSec, Skybox, and Toughen.

We are currently managing our firewall manually, which is why we are looking for an automated tool.

I would rate Oracle Database a seven out of ten.

Especially with Oracle, you have the high availability features. That specifically is very interesting to customers. When it comes to DR, I don't use high availability. Nonetheless, according to different strategies, it also provides features such as recovery, not the same as production, in different formats. That's a good feature about Oracle.

I provide disaster recovery services; they should look at how to recover production systems during disaster recovery. They are not focusing on that. They don't do that.

I’m in this industry doing recoveries. I don’t see an feature to easily recover all of the databases, especially RAC systems. That’s where they could come up with some kind of snapshots or technology that would make recovery easy.

The stability is completely amazing. It's been the industry standard for many years, so it is very stable.

As far as scalability, we can go from two nodes to I don't know, maybe 256 nodes. We can scale out, scale up and so on.

Technical support used to be not that great, but they are changing. They used to follow the Sun model. They are changing; it's better now.

They have developed automated systems. You don’t do anything. Basically, you turn it on and it brings up all of your stuff. It's easy to use.

When they look at databases, I don't think people look at any other vendors. You have only Microsoft and IBM DB2, but they are not that good. No one goes with them now.

I think when it comes to the product, the mindset is switching. Oracle is like a legacy RDBMS. People are switching to open systems. We have all of the new SQL databases, with no license costs. Especially if you also look at cloud solutions, that's where I think you need to have NoSQL or the latest technologies. That’s where they need to focus.

I'm not an end user of Oracle. We don't run any products on it. We have thousands of customers, and they come to us for disaster recovery. That's our business. We use all of the database solutions. In a previous life, I was an Oracle DBA, and I know what it can be used for. It can store large amounts of data. You can do all sorts of RDBMS data features and it’s the industry standard; there is no other database that can compare to Oracle.

When I’m choosing a vendor such as Oracle, I look at the licensing; other costs; and the help from technical support and even from sales. Sales people say yes to everything, except when it comes to implementation. It shouldn’t be that way.

The Autolink login is an important feature in the environment that we are in now. The product can also handle any size data, which is valuable because we have a variety of differently sized databases. There is a lot of support for the product and a lot of customizable features and build-ons.

The addition of a feature that better manages auditing and tuning would be useful for us. There are tuning features available already, but I am not yet skilled in those, so I don’t know if they are improvements, and currently, this is one of my biggest challenges.

We have used Oracle Database for about 20 years.

I have not had that many problems with stability over the years. I have found one bug personally, but other than that the Database has been pretty clean.

There are many different options for scaling. You can scale to whatever size you want by adding hardware, partitioning your data, or using some of Oracle’s different technologies.

There is a good knowledge base within the community of Oracle users that you can search to find information about your issues. You can often just Google search problems too.

If you submit a ticket with Oracle, they have a support system. While we get good support on our tickets, it can be challenging. Sometimes the support team disagrees with what you want to do and tells you to work in a different way. They also get frustrated with undocumented features, and if you have written code that you were not supposed to that runs in the current release, it could be prohibited in an additional release, forcing you to rewrite your code.

We have not had any major problems with upgrading. Like I said in regards to technical support, sometimes you have to do some recoding, but for the most part, upgrades have been pretty smooth. If your work is vanilla, you are fine. If you are trying to do some of the cutting edge stuff, there can be issues.

Make sure you know what pieces you need, since Oracle has a lot of components and add-ons that you can buy. Also, make sure you know what you are going to do with the product before you buy it, and research the marketplace to see if it is the best product for your needs. While there are many options, Oracle is recognized as one of the leaders in the marketplace. You just have to see if it is worth the money for what you want to do with it. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

• Online RMAN backup & restoration
• Active High Availability i.e. real application cluster
• Disaster recovery solution (physical and logical standby)

It increased operational efficiency manifold, as it offers lot of features automating operations, and faster failover mechanisms (i.e. almost zero data loss) with smaller RTO and RPO, helping Business Continuity.

It’s easy to find performance bottlenecks, I would prefer it to have a faster read time performance, especially considering read performance of NoSQL systems nowadays.

I’ve used it for seven years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Their tech support it good.

Oracle Database was found to be the most mature solution, in terms of features it offers. Hence, we chose this.

I would rate it mediocre, as it requires knowledge of operating systems and servers. Some people find it difficult due to the lack of OS knowledge.

We did it in-house. You need to do your homework, and read the standard documents thoroughly before proceeding with setup.

It is on the higher side, so it’s better for big enterprises. However, small and medium business can explore cheaper versions of the same product, which doesn’t offer all benefits of the enterprise version, but it will still be good enough compared to almost any other database solution.

Although it’s easy to operate, it needs expert hands, as it is different, and in fact better with a lot of features, compared to cheaper alternatives. So, good skills should be deployed to effectively use the features of the product for a better ROI.

There are several valuable features that we've found in our experience, including ACID compliance, strong backup and recovery features, smart cost optimizer, very good stability, performance, and it includes disaster recovery solutions.

The company I'm currently working for is an ISV that develops applications for the healthcare system, where High Availability is the main concern. Oracle puts the database layer at the highest level of reliability. As a plus, the smart optimizer can compensate for a poorly written SQL, giving good response times.

The biggest improvements are mainly high license costs and the unavailability of Enterprise edition options on the Standard edition. For example, on the Standard edition, you cannot buy transparent data encryption, needing the Enterprise edition to access that option (which has to be paid for separately). Official certification for VMware environments would also be an improvement.

I've used it since 2001, mainly on OLTP systems, as it is well-suited as an OLAP solution.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

All software has bugs and Oracle database is no exception. Oracle's RDBMS offers a high level of stability, but the increasing complexity (added functionalities and options) is in some way increasing the risk of hitting a bug.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

The level of technical support is quite low compared to the software level. It's hard to find a skilled specialist and response times are high. On the other side, except for really heavy load systems, it's quite rare to have to engage support.

The Oracle setup process has been simplified over the years, but it's still a complex task, at least when it comes to High Availability/disaster recovery solutions (RAC, DataGuard).

I was an Oracle on-site consultant so it is one of my major responsibilities to set up the Oracle Database according to best practices. Always start from RPO/RTO constraints to design the solution and read the Oracle manuals -- they’re wide but very well written.

I would advise that you carefully evaluate the compatibility of the software solution with Oracle Standard Editions which are way less expensive. Also, take a look to the new Standard Edition licensing model (called Standard Edition 2).

I'm currently studying PostgreSQL, which is an interesting RDBMS solution and it's open source (similar to BSD license).

From a technical perspective, it is the best RDBMS solution on the market so far. For mission critical solutions, I suggest engaging a senior Oracle database consultant to do the job. An experienced DBA can configure the system to leverage the full potential of the RDBMS both on the performance side and on the availability (backups, BC, DR).