Oracle Database Reviews

I have been working with Oracle products for more than 10 years, and as a consultant, I did a lot of implementations that include different database vendors. To be honest, Oracle Database provides you with different features that don't exist in any database, or you can find relevant features in other vendors, but it will not give the same capability Oracle Database has. Let's take for example RAC or real application cluster that provides HA for Oracle Database, it's considered as one of the best solutions for the database.

I have worked on different environments for different big client names since it's my job role, and Oracle provides a different solution for DR, performance tuning, security, and HA.

Talking about this will be unfair because regarding my experience (which is on related services), Oracle Database improved client solution by discussing what they want first, and then finding what database is the best solution for them. Most of the time an Oracle Database license is so expensive if you want to compare it with different vendors, but on the other hand, if you're looking for the best features that a database could provide to you, then Oracle is considered as the number one database of all time.

• The most valuable feature for me is the pluggable database because it provides database consolidation and the solution for utilizing your resource. On the other hand, I find security products that are provided by Oracle very strong and not in comparison with any database vendor.
• The encryption, database reduction, audit vault, database firewall: All of these products provide an extra layer of security when they are implemented in the right way.

• Let's also mention real application cluster, and disaster recovery solution.

The additional features that should be included in the database: I would like to see improvements for database security products.

one of the most stable database i ever seen, but to be honest the Support when you will have a bug or something it will make your life very hard.

The Performance for the database in general is good and the tools to analyze the performance in case you have some issue it's perfect and make it easier for you.

Yes, I used a different solution. The migration was to Oracle because we had to find the best for the client. It was a production database, and we needed 24/7 HA which other databases provided, but not as good as Oracle Database.

The cost of Oracle Database is so high if you compare it to other vendors. Therefore you have to study your solution and know exactly which features you want; this will minimize the cost and licensing price. For that, Oracle provides different types of DB such as EE, SE, SE1, etc. depending on what the clients want.

Yes, I worked on SQL Server, MongoDB, MySQL, and MariaDB.

The tool's most valuable feature is data encryption. The security features are good. They include field-level security, role-level security, and easy access controls.

The tool is costly, and migration is hard. We need tools like Database Migration Assistant for Oracle to migrate data between databases. Sometimes, older versions of Oracle are no longer supported, making the transition even more difficult.

I have been using the product for ten years. 

I rate Oracle Database's stability an eight out of ten. 

The tool's scalability is fine. However, you need to pay for additional nodes. 
Scalability is an issue because expanding the system requires additional hardware and licenses for each node. There's no option for mirroring the initial license across different nodes, so each new node requires its license. My company has 300,000 users. We're planning to increase usage gradually, depending on customer demand and database growth, aiming for about a 10 to 20 percent increase annually.

I used Microsoft SQL Server before Oracle Database. 

Oracle Database's deployment is fine. The deployment process for the Oracle database involves considering hardware compatibility. Licensing costs may vary based on the server model used.

The licensing cost is not based on a yearly subscription but rather on the number of devices used annually.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. Consider starting with an open-source database instead of Oracle Database, as the enterprise versions and licensing costs can be quite significant.

We use it for different applications in my company.

Stability and availability are the features I like the most in the solution. Transparent data encryption (TDE) is a feature I like the most in the product.

The product's price can be lower since it is a bit of an expensive solution.

Some engineers have the right skill set to resolve issues, but the support could be better.

I have been using Oracle Database for over ten years. I am an end user of the solution.

It is a stable solution.

The patching is an area that takes a long time, so we are trying to find another solution to minimize the downtime and do the patching.

Oracle Database is easier to scale up. The number of users using the solution in our organization depends on different applications normally, and it may be over a million being used by users for a customer.

The support from Oracle is okay. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The product's installation is difficult compared with other solutions since it can't support other platforms making the installation complicated.

The PoC phase to deploy the tool on-premises will take at least one week.

The solution is deployed on an AWS cloud.

Around two or three people were needed for installation.

My company has opted for perpetual licensing. We only need to make payments toward the licensing of the product.

It is not very easy to maintain Oracle Database. We need nearly twenty people in India to maintain the solution.

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

I use Oracle in two systems. The first one is called the Complaint Management System, and the second one was for Human Resources for the Ministry of Electricity in Iraq. 

The Complaint Management System is related to a call center. There is a call center responsible for writing down the complaints from the customers about their network electricity. If there is an error they reach out to us. There is an operator there writing down this complaint using his terminal. There are many different call centers in the country and all of them write up these complaints using the Oracle Database.

Oracle has always been a wonderful database. 

It is reliable. It's very stable. 

The solution has everything you are looking for in terms of features on offer. It's very complete. 

The solution can be quite expensive. It would be ideal if they could work on the pricing model in order to figure out how to lower the licensing.

It takes time to learn Oracle. There's a bit of a learning curve. It's not easy to use at first, however, slowly, day by day, you can get and develop your skills. 

There are a lot of YouTube videos and tons of material on Google that you can access. You can also easily find so many training institutes all over the world if you really want to understand aspects of the product. It would be ideal if Oracle could initiate some sort of learning center in Iraq. Even if it's just on Youtube, if it can be catered towards Iraqis to showcase the technology in the form of online Youtube videos or webinars, it would be extremely useful for expanding the solution within the Iraqi market. Right now, competitors like Microsoft can easily come in and just say "here's what we do, and at less cost than Oracle".

The initial setup is a little complex.

I've been using the solution for about ten years at this point. It's been around a decade, and therefore I've used it for quite a while.

The solution is stable most of the time. Unfortunately, I faced a few different issues. I was luckily able to solve them.

It's very important, if you choose Oracle as a solution, to also get the support as well. You can technically live without it, however, if you run into issues, Oracle can help you when you have the support that they offer.

In my case, I didn't have support so I had to kind-of feel around for a solution. I made the mistake, after the first year, of not renewing my support and I really should have.

The solution is scalable. If a company needs to expand it outward, it can do so.

While it's my understanding that technical support is good, frankly, for the first year, I didn't ask them for any help. Therefore, I don't have any experience with Oracle support.

That said, I have full faith that they will respond very well to any issues.

In my case, I had support for the first year of service and then did not renew it. You really should renew though. 

The initial setup was not really so straightforward. It's actually rather complex.

There are two ways to start with Oracle. You can go in by yourself and try to learn as you go or you can study a bit at an institute or school so that you can get pretty comfortable with the product. If you have some knowledge, there's less of a learning curve during installation.

The support does cost extra, however, it is worth the extra money. It really comes in handy if you run into problems.

We're just customers and end-users. We don't have a partnership or special business relationship with Oracle.

I really enjoy using the solution. It is stable and reliable. 

It's more expensive than Microsoft's options, however, I personally prefer working with it. It's worth the extra money. 

Aside from stability issues and a certain level of complexity, it's quite a good solution. I would rate it eight out of ten.

• Security and Scalability
• I have used Oracle technologies for last two decades apart from other similar vendors like MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, etc.

It helped build a strong core application layer

Its a natural choice for any complex enterprise relational system

• Security and Scalability
• I have used Oracle technologies for last two decades apart from other similar vendors like MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, etc.
• Power of Oracle combined with robust Unix platforms like Linux or AIX makes it powerful and secure as compared to MS SQL on Windows 
• IBM DB2 needs indepth technical expertise and lot of workarounds or automation to build a strong solution, MS SQL is on Windows and that makes it not the best choice

Support and Patching.

I found MS SQL Server support more helpful in many cases where in they internally rope in technology experts from different layers rather than pushing back on the clients, something Oracle can incorporate for sure.

Multiple issues, but mostly triggered from lower layers like OS, Network, storage layers.

Oracle GRID is sensitive to underlying network and disk timeouts and node evictions may happen if disk and network systems are not optimized

Oracle systems are highly scalable, Backup and Recovery strategy needs to be tweaked and is not as scalable as core database system. It needs some special attention to meet your RTO

Customer Service:

I would rate it 6/10. Many times the support is not able to solve the problems and they would put you into loops and escalate to their dev team which may take months to come back with a solution. Sometimes the solution never arrives and you are forced to upgrade to higher version.

Technical Support:

I would rate it 7/10.

We use the Oracle Database for applications such as sensor data management, banking tools, e-commerce forms, and similar functionalities. It is a data warehouse.

We have used the database in different production and environments. It has good features for performance tuning. I am using multiple environments for the Oracle web. The main functions are high availability, scalability, load balancing, and data integration.

The price could be lower.

I have been using Oracle Database for 7 to 8 years.

The solution’s scalability is good.

The customer support is better.

Neutral

The initial setup is neither easy nor complex.

The product is expensive.

Most customers use the stable version of the Oracle database. They should update it. Oracle V19 is the stable version.

Overall, I rate the solution a 7 out of 10.

We are mainly using it for our business applications. Our main business application is the ERP application, and the other one is the payroll application. Both applications are developed on the Oracle platform. The ERP application covers our sales and marketing side, as well as manufacturing and finance.

The database capability and the security side of the database are the real valuable features. The cloud SaaS model is also valuable.

In terms of support, they are very supportive and always available.

They can simplify and make the deployment more user-friendly. Deploying Oracle solutions requires a lot of technical input. If that can be improved, it would really add value to the business.

There should be features related to business intelligence and business analytics. These features are not built into the database. They are separate. They can at least add basic analytics features to the database.

I have been using this solution for a few years.

Its performance depends on the data center you are connected to. At the moment, we are subscribed to one of the US data vendors. Other than that, it is very stable and highly available.

It is scalable. Because we are using the cloud platform, it is very easy to scale it up. We have approximately 1,000 users.

They're really good in terms of providing support and attending to the issues. I am satisfied with their support.

Its deployment is quite complex, and it should be made simpler.

Its maintenance is minimal. You only need to take care of database patches, and you need to always follow up and update it on time. Other than that, when you configure it with the backup and all those things and automate, you don't need to worry much about the maintenance.

We were doing it internally.

Its price is a little bit high in terms of competitiveness. It is a little bit expensive. For any additional features, there are additional costs.

I would recommend starting with the SaaS model cloud platform. You can start at a small scale, and then you can expand based on your requirements. You can start with a small investment and grow as your business is growing.

We are going to explore the autonomous part. It has already been improved. We'll start using that area, but because we are already using this one, and it is stable, we didn't try to use the autonomous side. That would be the area that would be most useful for us in terms of the SaaS solution.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

It is for our core banking system. We are using version 19c, and the data is version eight.

All the database issues that we had have been resolved by using 19c. The database used to crash frequently, and now, that's a thing of the past. We haven't had any crashes in two months.

It is very fast. The response times are very fast.

Its price can be improved. 

In terms of features, we've just started using it, so we haven't yet come up with a list of features to be improved.

We have been using this solution for about two months.

It is very stable. We haven't had any crashes in two months.

It is very scalable. In terms of its usage, it is used by our core banking system. So, it is used by one system. It is not used directly by people. We don't have any plans to increase its usage.

It is quite good.

We were using Oracle but on different infrastructure.

It is complex, but it is doable. Our people were trained to do it and had the money to do it.

Its deployment did take long. We started the programming processes around August, and it went live only at the end of January.

Oracle helped us implement it.

It is quite expensive.

It is a very good product, especially for large sites. I would rate it a nine out of 10.