Oracle Database Reviews

My main use case for Oracle Database is to manage data and ensure the database is relational. I studied computer science as my first degree and developed an interest in managing data and big data on a database instance. Relational database management systems on very large projects made me appreciate the use case of Oracle Database products.

I can give you a specific example of how I have used Oracle Database on a large project. I was deployed as the only Nigerian on the Nigerian Census 2006 database geo-portal relational database management systems project where we had to port, test, and migrate 120 million records of Nigerian records from the database stored on Pervasive SQL data collection boxes and migrate them into the geo-portal spatial RDBMS instance at the National Population Commission headquarters at Area 11, Abuja, between 2008 to 2012. Because of my expertise and competence using Oracle Database at the time, I was using Oracle 10g, which was the underlying database platform that we used to store all this data. We needed to use Oracle Database because that was the only solution at the time that could comfortably handle the maximum capacity, size, and complexity of the data records. We had many issues using different database vendors that were not able to manage data of that magnitude. Oracle Database was the easiest, best, and most reliable solution.

The best features Oracle Database offers are hot and cold backups and the ability to automate your database backup and recovery modes. It also helps you understand the architectural framework of back-end to middle-tier and front-end applications, giving you a wider view of the bigger picture of why database data used by front-end developers is very important and how seamless integration works overall. Because of its complexities and its products and services, I find it very useful and better than many competitors in the market.

The automation offered by Oracle Database has impacted my day-to-day work significantly and made things much easier. We were able to schedule backups, especially when I worked on projects. I had to do many backups in the evenings when the rush to get database resources and IT bandwidth across the business was conflicting for limited resources. I had to make sure I would schedule the backups to the evenings when fewer people were in the office and when fewer resources on the server instances were competing for storage or processing power of the CPUs and the server power. The backups were reliable and we were able to configure and optimize the storage units in the servers to ensure the data was readily available when needed and called upon. The fact that Oracle gives you optimization configurations and helps you understand what needs to be done was welcome, and the customer support was very effective and efficient, which helped solve many problems.

Oracle Database has positively impacted my organization by providing faster data processing. When you have a software database instance that can accumulate data, we were dealing with data of two terabytes. Now, you have cloud systems where you can store data on the cloud with countless storage limits. The fact that you have a reliable software platform that can house terabytes and gigabytes of data is welcome. Seamless integration and cost savings are important benefits because once your data is reliable and you can recall it from backups, that is the first thing that every organization wants—to be able to access that data when required. It has to be reliable, functional, maintainable, and accessible.

When it comes to how Oracle Database can be improved, for me it is all about training and development in terms of gamification, creating awareness, and spreading the word to aspiring database administrators and database developers. As I have used it in the past and in recent times, many people are trying to get into IT, so the opportunity exists. Oracle has the market opportunity to take this time to spread its offerings and ensure that many aspiring professionals are aware of its services and products.

From my perspective, there is not much to add regarding the needed improvements for the interface and the documentation.

I give it a nine because I think Oracle sometimes can make things complicated. You have many services, many products, and many tools for different use cases. So it is difficult for someone who is only used to a particular product, such as Oracle Database, to understand all the other products and services that it provides. Probably streamlining it and making it available with categorized use cases for specific job roles would help. If you are a database developer, these are the tools that you need to be familiar with in Oracle's suite of products, and if you are a database administrator, these are the tools. Categorizing them based on the job role or function of people who are accessing these products and providing training capabilities on how to use them and how these products interchange and talk to each other would be very important because that is one of the things I struggled with when I started my journey as an Oracle Database administrator. Having that visibility of all the software products and providing free training and documentation on how you can improve and which products are best suited for integration to your product from Oracle would go a long way to help organizations and professionals.

Regarding Oracle Database's AI capabilities, I am very keen on its governance and security. I think more work needs to be done on the security and ensuring that the database for a large number of people is watertight. AI is here to stay; however, governance and more stress testing of the AI capabilities needs to be done to ensure there is no breach of data. I would rate it currently at 6 over 10 and there is room for improvement. As long as there are government policies and Oracle policies that can mitigate any breaches of data and serious security issues, releasing people's records over the internet, there is always room for improvement in that regard.

I started using Oracle Database from 2008.

Oracle Database is stable at 100 percent. As an organization, Oracle is really one of the biggest database software companies in the world and they provide day-to-day updates, guidance, compliance, auditing, and product improvements. Oracle Database is stable with good customer support.

Oracle Database's performance when handling large volumes of data is the best in its business.

The customer support of Oracle Database is excellent and provides detailed assistance. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the customer support an eight.

Before choosing Oracle Database, I evaluated the use of Pervasive SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server and found that all of them did not have the capabilities required that were present in Oracle Database, which made the decision very easy to go ahead with Oracle Database for our project. The disadvantages and inefficiencies of the other software vendors made it very easy for us to go with Oracle Database as the preferred solution.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Oracle Database was that it was a good business decision, strategic, and fitted well into our budget. It was straightforward because that was the solution at the time that was best suited for the kind of work we needed to do. We needed to have two terabytes of data storage to manage the data migration, testing, and data integrity of Nigerian census results in 2006 of 120 million records. The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Oracle Database was not too steep. It made financial business sense for the National Population Commission from the Federal Government of Nigeria to invest in that software. I helped set up the pricing, setup cost, and licensing as well.

I have seen a return on investment with Oracle Database because Pervasive SQL was used to collate all the records of the Nigerian census result database from data collection centers in states. The problem was that there was no universal central database server that could collate all these records together and scale it. That is where the decision to use Oracle Database came in because that was the only software at the time that could collate all this data in data collection centers on Pervasive SQL and centralize the data on Oracle Database. In terms of reliability, it was 100 percent. It saved a lot of money and time because of the debugging peculiarities and also using Toad for Oracle software to optimize the coding and performance of data migration. It was a win-win.

Before choosing Oracle Database, I evaluated the use of Pervasive SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server and found that all of them did not have the capabilities required that were present in Oracle Database, which made the decision very easy to go ahead with Oracle Database for our project. The disadvantages and inefficiencies of the other software vendors made it very easy for us to go with Oracle Database as the preferred solution.

The advice I would give to others looking into using Oracle Database is to be patient, be open-minded, and be willing to learn more about Oracle as an organization and the products and services it offers because it is a large organization with many products available that you might get lost trying to use a particular product and not know how other products within Oracle can seamlessly integrate into the product that you want. It is always best to have a good relationship with customer service or customer support and provide your use case and project brief to the customer support operator who can work with you and probably an Oracle business development manager to tailor solutions well-suited for your business needs. If you are doing this as an individual or a subject matter expert, you could be overwhelmed because Oracle as an organization or business has a suite of products that are many and you need to understand how each works together to provide optimum performance for your business needs. You might not necessarily need all of them, you might need all of them, or you may need some of them. If you discuss with the customer service operative, they will be in the best position to tailor your needs based on the solutions they can provide for you, making sure there is value for money obtained, cost saving, and benefit value realization, so your project or business scales as needed when required. I would rate this review overall at 9 out of 10.

I use WebLogic as a web server for my internal applications, specifically Java-based internal applications. I am using WebLogic server for my applications that are hosted internally, not for the public.

The most valuable features in WebLogic Suite are its stability and security. My application is quite stable on this server. WebLogic has positively impacted my organization as it is a mature product. It is scalable and secure. I can deploy my applications instantly on WebLogic. Another team is also utilizing WebLogic.

RAC is the feature where I can distribute the load among multiple nodes, and it has helped our enterprise applications.

I am not directly involved in the pricing case of WebLogic, as the other team is looking at budgeting and costing. The licensing model is based on cores. It would be more feasible if Oracle allowed licensing on a socket-based model instead of cores.

I have been working with WebLogic Suite for the last six to seven years.

It is a stable product. I did not use any other server in comparison to WebLogic, so from my perspective, it is stable. I would rate it 8 out of 10.

RAC is the feature where I can distribute the load among multiple nodes, and it has helped our enterprise applications.

Oracle's technical support is adequate. I would rate Oracle's technical support about 8 to 9 out of 10. The response time is fine. In some cases, they support me on a 24/7 basis, round the clock.

Positive

As per my knowledge, the previous solutions were adequate.

By using the provisioning of Oracle ExaCC in my infrastructure, it takes half an hour to provision a new database and then plug in a new application.

I did not take part in the implementation of WebLogic in my company. However, I was involved in the deployment from scratch, including the installation, provisioning, deployment, and then management and administration.

Oracle Database is costly. I think it is an expensive product. However, I need the stability and performance when I am deploying applications for the banking sector. I need the performance, security, and reliability. These are the main features, and Oracle is, I believe, number one.

I am not using any cloud product of Oracle except Oracle Cloud at Customer. I am using Oracle Cloud at Customer.

I am still working with Oracle products. I am still using Enterprise Manager 14c. I am using Oracle Database, Oracle ExaCC, Oracle EBS, Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle Linux. I can answer questions about my experience with WebLogic Suite. I use it in my company. I have not used WebLogic's diagnostic tools. I do not utilize its lifecycle management features. I do not have much experience with WebLogic Java EE support, as I just deploy the application and the other team utilizes this server. I am not directly involved in WebLogic. I have been using Oracle Linux myself. The deployment is local, on-premises. I have been working with Enterprise Manager as well. All the components of Oracle I am using are on-premises. I use Oracle 19c database, Oracle ExaCC, Exadata on Cloud at Customer. I have been using Oracle Linux, Enterprise Manager, and databases as well. I have been working with Oracle Database for about 20 years. My experience has been 100% positive with Oracle Database. I have utilized its Real Application Clusters along with Data Guard. I do not use Oracle's Advanced Analytics and machine learning features right now. I have given this review an overall rating of 9 out of 10.

The purpose of using Oracle Database in my environment is to store data and information related to the business. All kinds of information are stored in the form of tables. Different sets of information are stored in different tables, and they are linked to each other through primary keys or foreign keys. Some information from one table is included in another table in the form of a foreign key, connecting them to each other.

We can create views by combining more than one table so that we have separate information for our purpose and use. For further operations, we also create procedures and triggers. All these features are shown or operated through a Java application from the front end.

Regarding what I value about Oracle Database, as far as execution is concerned, I think it is one of the best databases I have come across. There are other databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, and Teradata, but among all, I found that Oracle Database is superior.

Oracle Database has extra features, functions, and statements that make it more flexible. I am familiar with Oracle Database Vault and Oracle Database In-Memory. I have experience creating procedures, queries, functions, triggers, and more as a core developer.

One existing feature that distinguishes Oracle Database from others is its ability to log errors in the database itself. We can directly log the errors, which I have observed and used.

Another improvement could be the ability to predict the actual time required to execute a particular query or procedure. This would be very helpful. If it has already been predicted that a particular query will take a specific amount of time, then there is no point in waiting for execution, especially during testing. For instance, if we are doing improvement or optimization for a particular query, and we are aware that this query will take one hour, we can stop it immediately and do more optimization instead of waiting.

I've been working with Oracle Database for more than 10 years.

Regarding the installation and deployment of Oracle Database, it is straightforward. There are no significant challenges. As core developers, we need to raise a ticket and get permission from higher authorities and management to install any software. The specific IT team handles the installation part on our behalf. We observe the installation process but don't perform it personally as we are not authorized. We are allowed to use only the software, so we can log in to our particular database and start working on it.

The installation of Oracle Database software takes just a few minutes.

I am using Oracle Database and PostgreSQL as my databases.

I have not used Oracle's Real Application Clusters. I have created procedures, but I would be very glad to use that feature. I have not explored Oracle's Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning features.

Oracle Database's cloud integration is quite flexible. Once logged in, functionality depends upon the access granted. With proper access, we can use any feature of Oracle Database.

Oracle Database's multi-tenant architecture is wonderful because once hosted on the cloud, it can be used by numerous users from the same locations and can be divided into multiple databases within one organization. It seems more flexible compared to on-premises installation. However, as I have not been a database administrator, I am not very familiar with organizing and providing access.

Regarding satisfaction with licensing costs for Oracle Database, I am not the right person to comment as these matters are handled by management and not disclosed to subordinates.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Oracle Database 8.5 out of 10.

I am currently working with Oracle, and I can confirm that I am working in Oracle E-Business Suite on-premise and cloud. I am working exclusively with Oracle products. E-Business Suite is mostly what we are currently working with, including EBS on-premise as well as OCI for cloud. I focus on the technical side, primarily the DBA side when it comes to E-Business Suite. My primary focus is on the database from Oracle, both the database and application side. I use Oracle Database personally and for E-Business Suite.

Regarding Oracle Database, the features I find most useful are the backup, disaster recovery, high availability, Real Application features, and stability; it is a very robust database.

I have experience with Real Application Clusters from Oracle, which we use for high availability. We have configured RAC (Real Application Cluster) and we are also supporting it.

The main benefits Oracle Database provides for me include ease of support and having a very robust framework, so we do not face many issues, except for performance issues which are mainly due to client queries and other factors.

As of now, I do not use Oracle Advanced Analytics and ML features; they are in a preliminary stage. We are utilizing AI (Artificial Intelligence) such as NLQ and Cohere, which is Oracle's AI tool.

In my opinion, Oracle can improve the performance statistics. For example, when there is a performance issue, we should be able to easily identify those problems. If there is a performance issue, Oracle should provide a way for us to identify the bottleneck.

I feel there is a lack of insights on the performance side and in the logs. If we get an error in any alert log or trace files, it can be very generic and requires further troubleshooting, which takes a lot of time.

I have more than 25 years of experience with Oracle Database.

I would rate stability for Oracle Database as a 10.

For scalability, I would rate it as nine.

Regarding Oracle technical support, I find it very poor; I would give it a four or something close to that.

Oracle support can improve both response time and quality, including not only response time but also the turnaround time for issue fixing, understanding the issue, routing it to the correct team, and debugging for resolution.

Sometimes, we ourselves get a fix instead of waiting when we raise an SR, because by the time they understand the issue and respond, we mostly fix it ourselves.

The initial setup for Oracle Database is very simple and not complex.

Multi-tenant architecture is not supported in E-Business Suite, so as of now we do not have any multi-tenant clients. This means I do not have the option to work with multi-tenant architecture because E-Business Suite does not support that.

We recommend Oracle, and as Oracle partners, we definitely recommend Oracle. I give Oracle Database an overall rating of eight.

Neutral

I use Oracle Database just for storage of the corporate database data and the finance data.

I use Oracle Database just for storage of the corporate database data and the finance data. However, I find the dashboard to be complicated and not user-friendly.

The dashboard is not user-friendly, and I would like to see it improved. Additionally, I think the first priority to improve should be the firewall.

I have been using Oracle Database for more than six or seven years.

Oracle Database is very stable. I would rate its stability as nine out of ten.

Regarding scalability, I think Oracle is expensive, and it's difficult to connect with cloud. I would rate its scalability as seven.

Since Oracle is not in Vietnam, technical support can be challenging. I may need to contact support in Singapore, and there are American time constraints involved.

Neutral

I work with other vendors like Cisco.

Oracle is more expensive than other solutions. I would rate the pricing as five out of ten.

Oracle Database is good for me, yet it may depend on the cost for others. My overall rating for the solution is seven out of ten.

The solution's most valuable feature is the row-level security that helps mask and encrypt data. In industries like healthcare and retail marketing, the details of patients' diseases and diagnostic reports can be masked using rollover encryption. In the financial sector, credit card numbers, user IDs, and passwords can also be masked using row-level encryption.

Oracle Cloud has a bit of a learning curve, so from an improvement perspective, we need to have a simple way to connect to computing in Oracle Cloud. Oracle Cloud should be leveraged to have structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Oracle Cloud should be like Amazon S3 bucket and needs to come with the versioning part. If the tool can provide options for versioning the data, it would be more useful.

There is a need to have backward compatibility from version to version. If a tool has all its versions, it would be better. Sometimes, we are missing the backward compatibility function in Oracle. Some versions are deprecated and removed. Migration somewhat involves coding of data and coding of queries, along with pre-querying the data.

I have been using Oracle Database for ten years. I am a user of the tool.

The tool is always upgraded as per the user's requirements. So I don't feel any issue. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It is a good and scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I have seen multiple use cases in different companies. I see that for one million or two million files, it works fine, but with twenty million files, it slows down because it lacks NoSQL properties. Around 30 to 40 developers use the tool in my company.

I have ten years of experience with the product, so I am habituated to installing the solution all the time. I did not find any issues during the installation of the product. The product is simple to install, especially because the instructions offered by the solution are very user-friendly. The tool offers a very good User experience during the installation phase. Each installation step is very well documented for a user to be able to understand.

I rate the product's initial setup phase as a nine out of ten.

The product's deployment process can be completed in a very optimal amount of time.

The tool's ROI is good.

The tool is expensive. Compared to its stability and eligibility, the tool is expensive, but if I consider the tool's ROI to be better, the tool is affordable with its set of features.

I use Oracle Database in our company's daily operations as we have a data pipeline which can cleanse the database. We have many connectors to ingest the data in Oracle Database. In the data lake, we do perform transformation, after which the cleansed data is moved to the warehouse.

The security features of Oracle Database match our data protection needs since it provides a particular user ID and a password while binding to the roles and privileges, like in the case of admin accounts and user accounts.

When it comes to data analysis, the tool has a very huge kind of data in it. In our company, we used to write queries, and Oracle helped us analyze the data, after which we can select a particular data set based on what we require. The queries are very fast.

The migration from Oracle Database 18c to Oracle Database 19c has affected my operations because I think that some of the features are being deprecated during each of the migration processes. I can rate the whole migration process as seven out of ten.

I started with Oracle Linux 7, and now I use Oracle Database 21c. The tool has matured and is good.

I recommend the tool to others. It is better to use Oracle's functions, whichever will improve scalability and app performance. The tool has many areas that will help us query data, code data, and perform analytics.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

The typical use case for Oracle Database is for stability, technical advantage, sophisticated technology, and database performance.

The return on investment with Oracle Database is good, providing high performance with the product. The system offers stability with no real outages, errors, or technical downtimes. In respect to these advantages, customers receive a return on their investment.

Oracle Database assists with AI initiatives by providing customers the chance for APEX, which is the low-code platform included in the database. This represents an additional return on investment.

The AI initiatives in Oracle Database represent a very promising direction. With 23 AI, there are many features and fundamentals, with vector search being the most important. These are instruments and tools that help customers improve their business and time to market. Additionally, using the OCI provides the possibility of KI or AI features. This improvement allows customers to have additional return on investment and strengthen their business opportunities.

Areas of Oracle Database that have room for improvement include the license policy. The product is good, but customers are concerned about the license policy, especially in virtualization in combination with VMware. There should be a solution. From technical perspectives, it meets most people's needs. Additionally, enterprise features should be made possible for Standard Edition, as clients would benefit from having access to some of these exclusive options and features.

I have worked with Oracle Database for almost 10 years, and our company has experience spanning over 25 years with Oracle Database.

In terms of scalability, Oracle Database allows for clusters and clustering capabilities, which means bringing several servers together to build a system. Scalability also extends to cloud usage where scaling up or down is possible within OCI. Oracle Database offers scalability both in OCI and on-premises.

The initial setup of Oracle Database is relatively easy with installation assistance and upgrade assistance.

For our customers, Oracle Database is mostly deployed on-premises in most cases.

Our clients are usually medium and large companies using Oracle Database.

I would recommend Oracle Database to others because Oracle is a world-leading company in databases. Oracle is data-driven and has cheap storage in the cloud, especially with AI features. Oracle Database is a strong competitor compared to other platforms.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Oracle Database a 10 out of 10.

My clients use Oracle Database for their ERP applications. Manufacturing companies use it for their ERP systems, and there are financial organizations, including banks, using the database to secure their data. They specifically use the enterprise database Oracle with licensed products.

Oracle Database is a Gartner-listed number one database, renowned for its robust and mission-critical capabilities. It is highly secure, with an architecture that prevents hacking incidents, making it the most secure database available. 

The database also supports mission-critical applications and large datasets, providing high availability and reliability. It is equipped with features like autonomous functionality and memory-efficient operations, reducing the need for machine resources.

Regarding room for improvement, there is not anything specific from a feature standpoint, as Oracle is a database company always enhancing and updating its products. However, the pricing could be more cost-effective, as the high price is driving some customers to consider migrating to open-source alternatives.

I have been connected with Oracle Database for 15 to 16 years, starting from my career's inception.

The stability of Oracle Database is excellent, rated at ten out of ten.

The scalability of Oracle Database is very good, which I rate between nine and ten.

Oracle's technical support is generally rated at eight out of ten due to some delays and challenges with ticket resolution, particularly regarding different time zones. The quality of the support is top-notch and deserves a ten, but response times can be improved.

Positive

The initial setup of Oracle Database is straightforward, with a step-by-step guide available. The abundance of documentation and resources makes it easy to follow along and complete the setup.

Oracle Database is highly-priced. Although it is robust and feature-rich, the pricing can be a concern for some customers, leading them to consider alternative options.

Overall, I rate Oracle Database a seven out of ten. While highly functional and stable, the cost remains a significant factor for many customers. If Oracle could make it more cost-effective, it would benefit many users. I rate the overall solution on a scale of one to ten at a seven.

The platform supports our large-scale transaction processing needs by digitizing workflows within various governmental entities. It includes everything from applying required forms to processing payments and completing transactions automatically.

The solution is stable. It meets our high availability, resilience, and large-scale data management requirements.

The product requires higher expertise compared to Microsoft. It could be easy to use. 

We have worked with Oracle Database for over seven or eight years.

The solution is very stable and robust. It is more trusted and capable than other solutions like Microsoft.

The product is highly scalable. 

We have thousands of users across multiple locations and departments, all served by a centralized data center that supports various public sector departments.

We use it in our large data centers to manage and store large volumes of data with high availability and disaster recovery capabilities.

While I have previous experience with Oracle's global support, our local partners currently manage the support, and we haven't needed to escalate issues to the worldwide team.

The setup process can be more challenging than that of Microsoft solutions. However, it is straightforward once you have skilled personnel handling the deployment.

Different partners usually handle the implementation and deployment. We also have support contracts with the technology vendor covering updates, services, and other necessary support.

Oracle may require higher expertise than Microsoft. While Microsoft has a larger pool of professionals and is easier to use, Oracle offers more robust and capable solutions, albeit with a higher skill requirement.

We work with various technologies, including Microsoft, MongoDB, and others, and Oracle integrates well with all solutions.

I rate it a ten out of ten.