Oracle Database Reviews

We are using the Oracle E-Business Suite ERP system and the backend of that application is Oracle Database. We are using the customer care and billing application and the backend of that application is also Oracle Database. 

The customer care and billing capabilities are very good.

It is very stable. We are getting good performance from it. The reliability is excellent. 

It's one of the leading databases on the market.

We get good support on the database side. 

The cloud setup is very simple. 

The solution works well for enterprise-level organizations.

We've used the solution for so long, it would be hard to switch off of it. 

On the ERP side, they do not seem to be improving the on-premises version. They seem to want to push the cloud option on users. The roadmap for each seems to be diverting, and the on-premises side simply isn't getting the same amount of attention.

The pricing could be high.

In our company, we've been working with the solution here for 15 years.

The solution is quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. We do not find that it crashes or freezes. It's reliable.

The scalability is very good. They are providing the structure, the architecture, and everything you need to scale. It's very easy to scale to whatever size you need. Usually, we can do scalable sites with no issue.

Technical support is okay for the most part. On the database sites, things are okay. However, if we talk about the application sites, sometimes we are getting a response time that is delayed.

The initial setup, for the cloud implementation, is very straightforward. Companies won't have any issues with the deployment. 

The solution is very expensive as they are charging their products in different categories. For example, we have to pay on the application side, on the technology side, and on the licensing. On an enterprise level, if we compare with other solutions, there are a lot of open-source options which would be cheaper.

We're just a customer and an end-user.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. I'd rate it at a perfect ten if the could and on-premises versions we treated with equal weight, and they didn't try to simply push cloud on users. 

On the enterprise level, it's very stable and reliable. It's great if users are looking for enterprise quality. However, there are options available in the Unix and Linux systems as well. 

My use case is a lot of banking solutions. Data sometimes is static in nature, but in a majority of the cases, it is dynamic as well. Oracle database is a focalization database.

Oracle Database has good performance dynamics with respect to oncoming data and fetching of data which gets loaded. All of the same processes are done by a system database administrator or even user initiated financials.

I've found performance streaming to be a valuable feature.

It is also a stable and scalable solution.

It is easy to install and easy to use as well.

They need to work on non-relational data a bit more. If Oracle Database can support non-relational data streaming, it would be great.

Pricing could be improved as well.

I've been using it for more than 10 years.

As for the stability of this solution, it's a hundred percent reliable.

Scalability differs depending on the schema created in Oracle Database to access the database artifacts. For example, in a normal recessional database, which does not have much centralized or decentralized schema, scalability can be very high. However, in cases where there is a centralized schema, the scalability has to be defined by the database administrator.

Our whole engineering team currently uses this solution.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate technical support at 9.5.

The initial setup is very straightforward, and Oracle Database is very easy to use.

The licensing is on a monthly basis. Improvement in pricing would be nice.

When you are into domains such as NIC, BFSI, retail, and account switching, then Oracle Database is definitely your best option. There are some aspects of Oracle Database that need improvement, but it can still be considered a good solution.

All in all, I would rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

We are primarily using it for software. We have a lot of software applications that are connected to this database.

Scalability, reliability, and performance are what we are getting with this solution. It is highly scalable and has very good performance. It also has in-built monitoring and optimized optimizer.

It is quite stable and secure. When it comes to integration, you can integrate it with other tools as well. However, we have been using Oracle Database within our own premises. So, it is kind of difficult for us to basically do a kind of integration with the outside software. We prefer to do things within our own premises.

There are SQL plan flips that are happening with version 12c. We would basically like to have the next version wherein we don't see such plan flips because they create performance issues. There are quite a lot of features that I would like to see, but this is the main one for now.

It has been over 20 years since we have been using Oracle Database.

It is absolutely stable.

It is highly scalable. It is scalable to the best of our needs. We have around 10,000 to 12,000 users.

We have three levels of technical support. The L1 level support is in-house. For L2 level support, we have an infrastructure team. For L3 level support, we have a contract with Oracle, and whenever we need it, we get their input.

We have been using Oracle since the time I have been working in this organization. I am not sure what was used previously. I am aware of 20 years, which is quite a long time.

It was very easy to install. It takes around two hours. This is a production database, so there have been a lot of validations. We do a lot of pre validations and post validations.  

For these kinds of installations, we have an infrastructure team. We have people here who do the installation. We have four trained Oracle Database administrators.

I would definitely recommend this solution. Oracle is already an established product. It doesn't depend on my recommendation. 

We will keep using this solution because we need to keep our data within our premises for our business model. As of now, we have no plans to go to the cloud and use any of the cloud services.

I would rate Oracle Database a nine out of ten.

I use this solution as a DBA on AIX and Linux.

This solution was great for a while until Oracle became adversarial with its customers and the professionals who support their products.

This solution has the best performance, bar none.

Oracle needs to stop suing users.

The documentation needs improvement because as it is now, providing support is a headache.

This is a stable solution.

This solution is extremely scalable.

The most valuable feature is the TDE advanced security as there are several options of different encryption algorithms. It's also easy to implement Tablespace Encryption.

We're able to go through and encrypt our database much faster using Tablespace Encryption versus using column encryption which requires you to identify each atomic piece of information to be encrypted. This ease-of-implementation gives us cost savings as we're able to get things done quickly.

I've heard rumors of an upcoming ability to get rid of ghost data. Here's an example: if I have a column in a database, say social security number, and a policy comes up and says encrypt social security number, and if there's an index on that column before you encrypt it, if you look at it, you can see the information in plain text. When you encrypt it, it does not encrypt the index. What it does is it marks the blocks available and creates a new index. Now you have ghost data -- plain text data.

We need an ability to shred that ghost data. Right now what I do is I advise people that when they encrypt something, manually move everything out of the old table space and then shred those data files. To be able to get rid of ghost data automatically would be great.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's incredibly stable. There's a couple things you do need to be aware of, but it's not so much the stability issues, it's actually the data leakage issues. Because we're talking about encryption here, you have to be careful that data can leak out in third text, and I'll give you an example. If you take a data pump export of encrypted data and you do not specify encrypted in the command line, it will be saved in clear text. That's one issue.

Another issue is if you gather histogram information on encrypted data, that data will be stored in the statistics tables unencrypted so you have to use a product such as Database Vault to wall that off so you can protect it.

I don't think there's an issue with scalability. Most people are more concerned about performance because you have to encrypt and decrypt on the fly, but with hardware encryption modules that is really a null issue. There is very little performance impact. We've encrypted data out to 25 terabytes in one system and we had no performance issues.

I haven't had to contact technical support.

I was involved in the initial architecting setup of this. It's not difficult, but it's very precise. Simply, the easiest thing to think about is you have to store your encryption keys. If you lose your encryption key, you've lost your data. One of the first things you do once you've encrypted your data is back up your encryption keys. Actually, you want to back up your encryption keys before you start encrypting the data. We generally burn those off onto a DVD and store them in the safe and then we store them on another system offsite. That is the one thing that will really burn you if you're not careful.

It's not time-consuming at all. The encryption keys are minuscule. I have Word documents that are bigger than the encryption keys. It's just if you lose that encryption key, you're hosed.

We looked at SAN encryption, but we wanted a system that was native to Oracle so that we're not worried about whether everything is integrated properly.

If it's not implemented correctly, you can still have leakages of clear text data. Understand the product and it's limitations before you implement it. Understand where things can leak and plug those holes ahead of time.

You also want to be able to basically understand the product end to end because here's another little issue: if I encrypt the table space at AES 126 or AES 128 and a policy comes out, we're now going to encrypt everything AES 256, you cannot re-encrypt the table space. You would have to create another table space, encrypt it at AES 256 and then move that data over. Then you have the issue again where you can go back and shred the data.

The most valuable features for us are the cloud-like traits of ODB, grid computing with version 11g onward, live database, and Data Guard.

We're a non-profit with branches all over the world -- Africa, India, and the US -- so we need a database solution that can be centralized. We have an entire datacenter in India, but our users need access to it from our other locations.

The key thing we need is a database that can pretty much run virtually in the cloud, that is, with a virtual datacenter. When we decided on Oracle three years ago, OBD was the only database that was cloud-like, scalable, and more robust than other solutions available at the time.

Honestly, it's not really in the cloud as such, but the definition of "cloud" changes daily. It's more on VMs, but the VM's are so powerful that we can access the database from anywhere without investments in machines or other hardware. We've been doing this since 2010 and we haven't hosted with cloud providers like Datamark or AWS, so we essentially have our own cloud.

While Oracle has been excellent, they haven't been growing or leaping forward like other vendors. I heard that Microsoft SQL Server will begin working with Linux. If that happens, Oracle has to do something because the cost will be one-tenth that of Oracle.

We haven't had any issues with the deployment of ODB.

The stability is good as the product has matured over the past few years. We initially implemented in 2014 and had upgrades since. We had some issues, which we told Oracle about and which they fixed. We had integration with a backend database because we are an Oracle workshop when it comes to database. They did not have too many customers using Oracle as a backend database.

We haven't scaled because of the unique constraints of our customized datacenter, but we use Linux because of Windows limitations. But we have been able to go from a mom-and-pop garage shop to where we are now.

The support is amazing. We have a great relationship with the non-profit technical support as well as with our sales rep with whom we've been with for ten years.

We have used Microsoft SQL Server, but the problem with that is that runs only on Windows. We wanted it on other units. Then we used Sybase, but that is more of a financial database, and didn't help much for our non-profit business. Then we used IBM DB2. That's a nice database, but IBM was considerably more of a hardware than a software part.

We wanted someone who is a player only in the database world because we had everything else and because we are non-profit, we do have tie-up with different companies where we get a different special rate for licensing.

We prefer Oracle because they are the niche players in the database world. We are pretty happy.

Because I'm a technical person and I have experience as a database administrator, the initial setup was pretty simple for me. The support was amazing and we didn't have huge roadblocks. If anything happened, such as issues with plugins, Oracle just gave us a patch.

Our implementation was done in-house by me and my team.

Because we're a non-profit, we have a buffet deal. For the first three years, they won't charge us any license fees for any use. It's all-we-can-eat. After three years, they'll come back and look at the footprint and license us based on that. This is a big deal for non-profits, but Oracle is willing to do it.

We looked at others who specialize in the cloud, such as CloudData. But Oracle is penetrating the cloud field. If you look at the Magic Quadrant, Oracle is positioned well with its RDBMS and Exadata, along with EMC Greenplum, Microsoft Azure, IBM's cloud solution, and others. We did PoCs with them all.

We have deployed Oracle Database on-premise hardware and on-premise cloud.

Oracle Database is used as a database for various applications. We are using it for a lot of our warehouses.

Oracle Database is the most widely accepted database, and it has built-in technical and security capabilities. It supports the new object in the database. The performance and security are very good, and it is user-friendly. There are a lot of people trained to use this solution which makes it simple to find assistance.

Oracle Database could improve by making migration less difficult and having better integration. For example, having the ability to communicate, using native features, to different databases. Mostly connectivity to different databases, such as open-source databases or any other database.

I have been using Oracle Database since it was version 3 and they are on version 17. It has been a long time.

The stability of the Oracle Database is very good.

Oracle Database is scalable.

Everyone in our organization is using the solution. We have approximately 2,000 users using it directly or indirectly. We have developers, DBAs, system administrators, business analytics people, auditors, and regular users. Additionally, applications are using the database.

I rate the support from Oracle Database a three out of five.

The initial setup of the Oracle Database was straightforward. 

If Oracle Database was for a new customer or a new installation, I'm not sure, how difficult it is since we have been doing the implementation for approximately 30 years. For us, it's very easy. We are used to the software.

The price of Oracle Database could improve, it is expensive and they are paid annually. We are looking for lower pricing and flexible pricing plans, they are very rigid in the price.

I rate the price of Oracle Database a two out of five.

My advice would be for others to use the cloud version of this solution. Do not deploy it on-premise, and deploy them on the containers. Using containers, not directly on the infrastructure, then it makes it very easy, scalable, and more flexible to move around.

I rate Oracle Database an eight out of ten.

Our company does not have an Oracle Database. We are in charge of maintenance and deployment. We have several managed services for several customers, and we administer and deploy Oracle databases in those customers.

We are system integrators who deploy projects with infrastructure and manage infrastructure services.

Our main customers are in the banking industry. In the banking environment, Oracle databases are used for a wide range of solutions.

For all bank transactions to communicate in the various Oracle databases, the data must be extracted from the host systems and brought to work at a data warehouse. With a special banking solution, it requires another banking program.

Oracle is used to deploy solutions. The dashboard may be the best solution for intelligent data management, as well as business intelligence.

We believe that Oracle in the cloud is more secure.

It is more scalable on-premises.

Technical support needs improvement.

We have been providing Oracle Database for the last ten years.

We have been system integrators since the company's inception. I believe it will be 20 years that we have been working as system integrators.

We work both in the cloud and on-premises. We were born on-premises, but have spent the last five years working in a hybrid cloud model.

Oracle Database is a stable solution.

Oracle Database is scalable.

We have approximately 25 to 30 customers in the banking industry who use Oracle Database.

Technical support is okay, but some areas could be better.

Our core business is in the desktop virtualization model with Citrix and Microsoft. Citrix with desktop and Citrix solutions, as well as VMware and all virtualization software-defined projects.

We put all of our solutions in the cloud. It is one of our primary focuses, but some of our clients may prefer to have some of their infrastructure in on-premises solutions.

We use all of the virtuals from all of the databases. We use both Oracle and SQL.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's an easy installation.

The way we deploy services and project infrastructures in the cloud and on-premises differs.

We are deploying Oracle for large systems. We are aware that our customers have large Oracle systems.

There is a good return on investments.

In the last two or three years, we have been active on the internet to research the deployments to bring to the customer.

During the previous administration, we collaborated with our customers, and we preferred to deploy the new Oracle systems to the cloud, perhaps we are working on the journey from Oracle system to cloud, which is based in Oracle Cloud.

In general, I recommend the product. We have customers in Spain and Latin America, including Argentina, Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico.

We introduce and maintain Oracle for these customers. Alternatively, one of the major customers is Bank Santander, Bank Sabadell, or Kaiser, which are large banks with operations all over the world.

We're collaborating with Oracle's architects and consulting solutions team in one part of the project and the Q&A in projects. We collaborate with Oracle consulting teams to deploy the solution in dashboards.

I would rate Oracle Database a nine out of ten.