Oracle Database Reviews

We work with a bank and our core banking application sits on Oracle Database. Most of the applications in our ecosystem are all developed on Oracle RDBMS, so Oracle Database. They are all running mostly on Oracle Database. I'd estimate that 75-80% of our applications all run on Oracle Database in our environment.

The solution has been around for a long time, so it's very mature. We've used various versions, from 8 to 12 c. The RDBM has a strong reputation.

The solution is able to run on different types of machines, from IBM AIX to UNIX.

The solution has very robust integrity due to how it is designed and implemented.

The security is very tight. Users can be very sure of Oracle's safety. It has a variety of different security layers that make it very, very safe.

Oracle offers a great disaster recovery tool called Oracle Data Guard, which is fantastic.

The solution has very good failover capabilities. You can do it manually or automate the process if you like. It's all very transparent.

You can query around the rack as well you call it the rack cluster. There's great availability. It helps to handle high availability within the nodes. Even if you have a problem with one server, the others are still available and will continue the job without going down. 

We work in a back-end environment that is mission-critical, and we cannot afford downtime. Oracle is a perfect solution, as it will never go down. Customers will always be served at any point without experiencing a delay, which is of vital importance to banking.

Oracle is constantly working to improve its products. It now offers AI and machine learning capabilities to run queries.

There's lots of research and development being done constantly. This ensures they are always one step ahead of other databases.

The solution can be quite expensive for small and medium-sized enterprises. Not too many companies can actually afford the pricing.

The way it is designed, there are a lot of constraints on the solution. Everything doesn't just happen at once.

Oracle doesn't handle SQL. You can use other products for that instead, including another Oracle product. If you need SQL, you can use MongoDB, MariaDB, or the Cassandras.

I've been using the solution for fifteen years now.

Oracle Database is 200% stable. Most of the time when you have issues, it's not with Oracle but with the applications that are running on it that are not properly tuned. Oracle, however, if absolutely reliable.

The causes on the application end need to be properly looked at and tuned up properly, to reduce the overhead costs that are there. The loads are something we can have effect if we need to, and that's where we usually see problems.

We do a lot of scaling. When we need to scale, we need to go through the Change Application Board at the company to make sure everything is properly documented, and everyone is made aware of the changes. When you scale or make changes on the system, it doesn't lead to downtime. that's extremely important to note. We use a rank model where you do changes one node at a time.

Ultimately, the solution is very easy to scale.

We are satisfied with technical support. 

However, people need to know how to manage Oracle support. Around here, we added what we call Advanced Customer Support, Oracle ACS. This is white-glove service for items that are of critical importance.  

With Advanced Customer Support, if they need to fly down, they will fly down and come directly to you to help you look at further into very critical issues. With their premier support, which is still quite good, I would rate them 90%, however, with ACS, I would rate them 100% satisfactory.

I've worked with other databases in the past.

In terms of the ruggedness of the database, especially in relational databases, I find Oracle design very strong. I want to believe that so many of the other databases that started coming up were trying to imitate what Oracle had. However, when you talk about databases holding data, they are managing very large databases, Oracle is still what you would want to go for.

For smaller data, there are other relational databases that are good. However, if the customer must have a response that will be like the speed of light, then you still have to go for Oracle.

The difficulty of the initial setup varies. It depends on the company and who is setting it up. The truth of the matter is that you need a little bit of experience to be able to manage Oracle. That is why not every Database Administrator that does it for Oracle is a specialist in running it on a Unix level environment. Once you are able to get to that level, there is a pretty good graphical user interface that brings you through the selection process. You need SPS to do some form of tuning.

Were paid to set up the solution appropriately. We try to mitigate any performance issues and to lay out the parameters. You really need to look at memory and to look at your LGA to have a successful implementation. It all requires quite a bit of knowledge. You can't just be experienced in databases; you need to be experienced specifically in Oracle. In that sense, overall, it's not too straightforward.

To deploy the solution, the amount of time also depends on a lot of factors, including the person's experience with Oracle, and the company's overall requirements. With my experience, I can do it within a few hours.

For deployment, you would need a small team to assist in the process. You must always ensure the continuity of the business, so it's smart to not just rely on one person. If your database has two terabytes of data, you'll need a solid team with a minimum of five people on it. That way, everything is managed competently and everything is proactively monitored. For the bank, we have a team of 15 people managing the entire database for the group.

This solution is definitely geared towards larger enterprises. It's quite expensive.

Currently, we're using the 12c version fo the solution and we're migrating over to the 18c version soon. We're mostly using the on-premises versions, however, we're likely to migrate over to the cloud in the future.

Having used other products, I can say that hands down Oracle DB is a fantastic product.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The best feature on Oracle Database is the Data Guard. It's great if you want to build some sort of disaster recovery solution.

ARC is one of the best features. It's quite simple and flexible. It offers really simple guidance that helps make using it a breeze.

On-prem, Oracle is the number one database technology.

Oracle needs to improve its cluster technologies. They need to improve in the cluster technology using ARC due to the fact that sometimes people think that they have a redundant server when they are using ARC with the cluster and think that will increase the performance. In reality, if they are using ii with a big workload, sometimes the performance is not increasing, and can sometimes actually impacts it in such a way that there's some degradation in the performance. 

Oracle has covered all the aspects of the market requirement. Let's say someone who searches for a security solution that has high availability, security, manageability, and performance. That's all of the IT requirements, basically, and they are all covered by Oracle. There aren't features lacking, in that sense. That said, while that's a true statement in terms of on-premises deployments, and Oracle really is is the number one database technology, when it comes to the cloud, it's still a question about how good Oracle really is. Most of our customers are using Azure or maybe AWS. Not Oracle. That's the one area that Oracle should improve.

I've been working with the solution for 11 years. I mostly only handle the core technology.

Right now, I would say that Oracle is one of the best solutions for our customers in terms fo stability. If they handle big productions or process a lot of paper, this is the perfect choice for them.

If they need to, companies can easily add more nodes to the cluster. It's easy to use its cluster technology to scale. I would say it's rather easy to expand the solution if you need to.

If we talk about the MOS, My Oracle Support, it's more of a self-service. Currently, sometimes it's not as reliable as we wish it was. Mostly, our internal team handles support as we can't really rely on Oracle. We'd only go to them if the problem is related to the product, for example, if it's got some bugs or something like that. For troubleshooting, our customers come to us for assistance. From a technical aspect, we are quite confident that we can support all of the customer's needs ourselves without using Oracle.

We previously used MySQL, although that too is an Oracle solution. It's part of our portfolio alongside Oracle DB.

When people talk about Oracle, especially Database, most of them mention that Oracle is an expensive product. However, if it's suitable or not or if it really is "expensive" depends on their requirements. Today, Oracle is one of the best choices, regardless of pricing. 

Even though on paper their pricing looks expensive, everything can be negotiated. Companies may be able to come to an understanding with Oracle at a price point they can accept.

In our market, there are a lot of open-source products like EnterpriseDB. There are also commercial products like PostgreSQL. With Postgre you have to have MySQL with it right now. 

If a customer prefers to use an open-source product, I'm quite confident with MySQL.

We are an Oracle Platinum Partner.

I'd first advise any company considering Oracle to learn the benefits first before they talk about the pricing. We like to do an assessment with the customer right away. The first thing we need to know is their pain points and basic requirement and also if they have a common problem in their system. I will judge that against the benefits of Oracle's technology, which is in the database. At the end of the day, if the features can solve your problem, then money comes as a secondary concern. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. There isn't a perfect solution on the market, however, this comes pretty close.

We work in agriculture, and where we're located we have two sites in two separate cities in Canada. These are all transactional databases and they have information in them about the dairy industry in our country. We use it for storing data related to dairy cows, dairy farmers, or farmers in general, and we have all the information in the transactional database that holds everything from billing to individual animal data. We probably have about 12 terabytes of data on the Oracle databases.

The reliability and the ability to store all the information we need is how it helps us the most. I don't know the metrics of the top of my head, I just know it works. 

We decided to use Oracle from the start because of its reputation of robustness. It provided us with everything that we needed. 

The reliability is the solution's most valuable feature. We've had great success with the solution.

The ability to do all the programming we need in one solution is great.

The support has been very good over the years.

The main thing we find could use improvement is the licensing costs. It is quite expensive relative to other database vendors. Cost always comes up as an issue for us as we consider upgrade paths. It's not as easy as we would like it to be. 

While we really like Oracle, it's difficult sometimes to upgrade from version to version.

I'd like to see the high availability option become available in the standard edition. We have a couple of databases that are still in the standard edition, and we'd like to be able to back those up and have higher availability.

We've been using Oracle for a long time. We originally started using it in 1999 just before the Y2K crisis.

The stability is very good. I'd rate it ten out of ten. We have some databases that run for a year without rebooting or anything, so I would describe it as very stable.

We do have a couple of international projects for our users that will be accessed from other countries, but it's currently stable.

There's no problem with scalability. It's quite easy for an organization to expand if they need to.

We have many users on the solution, including myself, and I have an administrator role. We have five database administrators that manage the day to day operations of the database. Then we have about 20 developers that develop different applications or make changes to the database for us. There are also internal users. We probably have, I'd say, 500 employees that have access at any given time. Our customers also have access. In total, we have about 15,000 people on the solution.

Technical support, on a scale of one to ten, I would give a seven. There are some things that take a little bit longer to resolve than others, however, overall, I would say it's good. It's not very good. It's not excellent. It's good.

We haven't gone anywhere else and tried any other database software. We did previously use IBM's Mainframe 20 years ago.

The reason why we switched was because we were changing our data center. It's a little bit complicated, but there used to be four organizations that did the same thing we did. And due to the Y2K scare, we decided to merge all these organizations into one data center. It was more of consolidation from different technologies into one Oracle technology.

I was not really involved in that migration. I was there, however, I didn't have a role in it. Oracle was ultimately chosen based on the robustness and they had. 

It was a very big undertaking. We moved from an IBM mainframe. With regards to Oracle, the set up was, I would say, easy, however, when you're building a database, there's a lot of things to think of. That's not really the database's problem. You have to think of and plan out your table structure. You have to think of how you're going to set up your database. 

The deployment happened 20 years ago. It was a very big project. The implementation took a year to migrate our existing data into an Oracle database. It went well, although it did take about a year to implement.

You need about five people to handle maintenance on the solution.

We used a consulting firm to assist us in the implementation at the time. The experience was good at the time. Still, it was 20 years ago. They're actually out of business now. They may have gone out of business ten years ago, or merged with another company.

Our licensing costs are between $40,000 and $50,000 per year. Those are the costs that cover maintenance and licensing. 

We have an enterprise edition. We pay extra for features that are only available with this particular tier.

We did evaluate different databases, including IBM's Db2. And that was it at the time. Microsoft didn't exist back then for databases.

We started using version 7 of Oracle, and now, after so many years on the product, we are up to version 12.

We have six different main production databases that we use for various things. They're all on-premise. They either run in a Linux environment or IBM AIX Unix environment. And we also use a backup Oracle cloud for backing up some of those databases.

The main advice I would give other organizations would be to prepare for the costs. Oracle is kind of more expensive than in most other database software. It's also important to have a good understanding of how Oracle works and the programming. It's quite specialized. However, if you're implementing a big database environment, you need to know that anyway. 

Oracle is, I would say, probably the top database provider in the world. Having a big name, for us, was good because we've got other contracts from outside firms that trust us because we house our data with Oracle. 

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for, and we don't mind paying more for the peace of mind we get from this solution.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten mostly due to the fact that it's a very solid platform and it's robust and it's scalable. It's the Cadillac of the database world.

Oracle database stores system data accessed by desktop users, primarily for HR and ERP systems. I plan to implement some custom functionalities for standard operations.

Oracle Database is suitable for large enterprises.

Some applications use specialized hardware to optimize query processing. I've received customization requests for call recordings and other features.

I have been using Oracle Database for three years.

The product is stable.

Many team members are using this solution.

The technical support takes longer time to respond.

The initial setup is complex.

I rate the initial setup two out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

You need an experienced Oracle administrator to maintain the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

The solution is used for accessing and restoring data.

The product provides high availability. I can easily use the product because I have 20 to 25 years of database experience.

The product must provide an autonomous database. It should enable users to administer the database easily like other open-source databases. Oracle RAC must be improved.

I am using the solution currently.

The tool is stable. I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a five out of ten. We need too many servers. Our customers use the product, and we support them. Our customers have about 100 users, including developers and managers. We are planning to increase the number of users.

I used primitive tools before.

We need four people to deploy the product.

I rate the pricing a five out of ten.

We are solution partners. Oracle Database is an enterprise solution with high availability. It's for professionals. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

We are using Oracle Database for the database use cases.

The most valuable feature of Oracle Database is its responsiveness.

The price of the solution should be lower.

I have been using Oracle Database for approximately one year.

Oracle Database is highly stable.

I rate the stability of Oracle Database a ten out of ten.

I rate the scalability of Oracle Database a ten out of ten.

I rate support of Oracle Database a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Oracle Database is simple.

I have not seen a return on investment because of the high cost.

The price of Oracle Database is too expensive.

We might be switching solutions because the price is too high.

My advice to others is this solution is great in capabilities and functionality but it is too expensive.

I rate Oracle Database a seven out of ten.

I mainly use this solution for data warehouse applications, report generation, and transactional data processing.

Partitioning is the most valuable feature.

It would be useful if I could connect to an expert for one-on-one help.

I've been using Oracle Database for more than twenty years.

Oracle Database is stable and reliable.

The basic initial setup was straightforward, but a professional would be required if the solution needed to be fine-tuned.

I've seen a good ROI.

Oracle Database is expensive.

I would recommend Oracle Database to others - it's a well-developed solution and is accepted on the market. I would give it a rating of eight out of ten.

We are using Oracle Database to store information.

What is most valuable with the Oracle Database is the performance.

Oracle Database could improve security to make the solution better in the future.

I have been using Oracle Database for approximately six months.

Oracle Database is reliable.

The scalability is very good in Oracle Database.

We have approximately 17 employees that are using this solution. In the future, we will have many more.

I was previously using Microsoft Excel.

The initial setup of the Oracle Database is user-friendly. The process did not take long to complete.

There is a license required to use Oracle Database.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Oracle Database a ten out of ten.