Oracle Database Reviews

The most valuable features for us in our experience has definitely been the security and reliability it brings to our environment. We know that our data is safe and secure and that Database is incredibly stable. There's a peace of mind that it affords us.

Because it's secure and reliable, we can have confidence that we can just go on with business as usual. We're able to focus our efforts on more important aspects of our business instead of worrying about threat protection and lost data.

I've been very happy with the progression of the product. One thing I would like to see is a better feature set for pluggable databases, that is, the multi-tenancy of the database. It's still in its infancy at the moment and I'd like to see in 13c a big leap forward with better support for multi-tenancy.

I've been working with Oracle databases for over 16 years.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

Database has always been solid. There's been a couple little buggy things at the beginning, because I was working with version 7, but from 8i onwards, everything was solid.

There's absolutely no problem scaling it. They give you plenty of options and a lot of best practice in order to be able to do that.

I've always been very happy with Oracle support. I think probably the one thing that I'd like to be able to have is more input into is the feature set for the next release.

The most valuable features of Oracle Database are that it's very powerful, very reliable, and very fast. Those really are the main attributes that any organization should be looking for from a database solution. Can it take the data you throw at it, can you count on it to be available, and will it provide you enough speed so you can work efficiently?

It's a very secure database so that we don't have any worries about security on the database side. We host a lot of data for our customer. It's very important to have a database that's secure and reliable.

It's a very expensive solution. There are other, less expensive products out there, but you wouldn't be getting such a premium product.

We have no issues with deployment.

We have absolutely no issues with the stability. That's one of the primary advantages of Oracle Database.

We've been able to scale it just fine for our needs.

The initial setup was very easy and very straightforward. It's not a difficult product to stand up, and combined with our technical knowledge, the setup was very easy.

We implemented it ourselves with our in-house team.

It's very expensive. You pay a premium price for a premium product.

We didn't really consider other database solutions despite the price because we use other Oracle products already.

Just make sure you read up on it and plan ahead.

The most valuable feature is its ability to be tuned so that we can gather data and our developers can build their code in it without too much hassle. Oracle Database has a lot of memory and other parameters that you can specify in the .ORA file and tune.

They should make new releases more stable, rather than waiting for the product to mature and releasing patches. Also, they should improve their tech support so that it's more consistent.

Also, I'm looking for more security. They give you a lot of options, but they all cost extra. I'm hoping that in the enterprise edition they include some of those options at no extra cost as standard features. It's already expensive as it is.

I've been using it for 20 years.

We've had no issues deploying it.

The newer releases always have bugs and issues, but as the releases mature, they become stable. Take 11g R1, for example, which is a good product, but it initially contained a lot of bugs and kinks. 11g R2 was a lot more stable with many of the issues worked out. There were still some bugs, but they were minor and fixed with patches.

We have used it in rack environments where we use it with Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Grid, and we can scale it.

Technical support, in our experience, is both good and bad. There have been times when we log an issue and the feedback we get or the support we're getting are just not good. But the there are times when within an hour or two we get the right feedback. So I guess it all depends on the engineer who evaluates the ticket and receives it and works on it.

Oracle Database is definitely a great tool. If you're looking for a database technology or tool, you should definitely use Oracle Database. There are many other databases in the market, but I think Oracle has really matured its product over the last ten years. It has a lot of options that do cost extra, but there are a lot of security options in there that are built-in, such as encryption, transportable table spaces, etc.

One of the features that stands out to me is the Real Application Cluster. This gives us the ability to have active-active clustering functionality. We can scale horizontally to multiple database servers and instances, which gives us both High Availability and load balancing, great features both.

There's also the new In-Memory feature that allows us to do a lot of OLAP transactions.

As with any organization, before we embark on anything, we have to look at the ROI as well as the ability of a particular tool. Database is rock solid, which, of course, affects our ability to do work and provide customer service. We're a mutual fund company, so stability is really key in providing satisfactory customer service. Oracle Database really gives us this key factor from an IT perspective.

We'd like to see a few more security improvements. Security right now is a very, very big issue. Oracle is doing a very good job with security enhancements with each now releases, the latest of which, I think, is 12c release 2. But I'd really like for it to have a lot more security enhancements that are added to Database, rather than pushing the enhancements into some of their other tools that you have to buy in order to be able to take advantage of those enhancements and functionalities. Like I said, security really is key for us as we do a lot of encryption, so it would be best if the additional security features and enhancements were part of Database rather than part of some other product we'd have to buy.

Deploying it was no problem. We had no issues with it at all.

Stability is not an issue at all. Oracle is a database company and Database, as their flagship RDBMS, is the product at the highest level of maturity.

It's scaled to our needs.

We have premier support from Oracle, so we have a very good relationship with technical support.

It's the most mature Oracle product, so setting up the RDBMS was straightforward.

Despite the fact that it's the most expensive of the RDBMS solution available, there's a reason why Oracle Database has the largest market share. It's the best there is. If there's another RDBMS vendor that provides some functionality that Oracle doesn't, then you'd really have to evaluate what your true ROI will be. From my perspective, though, Database is worth it.

It's enterprise-wide and can handle big databases. Also, it performs automatic backup recovery and database management and monitoring, both of which are extremely useful.

We've reduced our time monitoring the database and, instead, spent more time researching and improving our system.

The portal site needs to be improved, as sometimes it's very slow. They also need to improve their critical problem resolution, especially error ORA-60000. I hoped that they'd be able to reduce those types of errors by now.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We very seldom have stability issues. It's been really stable so far.

It's a scalable solution that comes at a cost.

Issues are registered through their portal where we login our tickets. Sometimes, it's a bit slow and their response is a bit average unless it's Severity One, in which case the response time is really quick, about 1 or 2 hours. Otherwise, if it's Severity Three or below, it can probably take up to one day. Sometimes the development team needs to look into the issues.

Database was already set up when I joined, but I haven't heard that it was particularly complex.

Oracle needs to reduce the licensing cost as it's getting more expensive.

You have to really know the Oracle version type that you're working on, especially with the new Oracle chassis which is running on multi-tenant architecture. That is very important if you are, just like our company, on MTA, multi-tenant architecture. We have to really know the inside out how it works before we can actually support and maintain it. So be well prepared for it.

I think that the most valuable feature of Oracle Database is the knowledge base that's available. If there's a bug, I can find the solution in the knowledge base. If I need to know why something's happened, or whether there's a workaround, I can find the solution in the knowledge base. There's a wealth of information available there, and I live and die by it.

Our core business relies on its ability to work with RDBS. You could say that we make all our money by using Oracle. Since version 8i, it's been my bread and butter. I love the product and use it every day.

The features that are there, it usually works perfectly. The new features, you see that it takes some time to pick up and sometimes they break things they really shouldn't.

I've been using it since Oracle 8i, which was 18 years ago.

We've had no issues with deployment.

Oracle has added a new optimizer option to do some very fancy stuff, but it provides the wrong results. And at this stage in the life of the product, wrong results should never happen. That's why I have Database -- to get the correct results.

It scales very well. With NoSQL though, there are scalability issues because it just cannot spin up. But I've found that with Hadoop and AWS, you can spin up to 2,000 new nodes and it works fine. You can't do that with Oracle, but it's legacy software nowadays.

Technical support is fine. Fortunately, we don't have any priority-one issues within our business that depend on Oracle Database. For minute-to-minute operations, I get a good enough response from technical support.

As a vendor, we support older versions and the customer will never touch them. I really don't need to ask technical support for a fix, I know that the customers will not use it.

We haven't used a different RDBMS since I started with the company.

The initial setup was done before I started my current position.

The implementation was done before I started my current position.

For us, the most valuable features of Database have been its robustness, reliability, and the fact that it's highly tuneable.

It also allows us to support large applications and to also tune them properly. Database really provides us with great performance and stability.

I really wish that Oracle had included pluggable databases in the 12c Enterprise Edition. I can understand not putting it into the Standard Edition, but it should be included in the Enterprise Edition at no additional cost.

My other gripe is their licensing practices of the database engine. If I run a VMware infrastructure, and a lot of people do, Oracle makes me pay for licenses for the entire farm. It's very expensive and I don't think it's fair that they'd charge for it.

I've been using Oracle Database for twenty-five years.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's way better now than it used to be, but, yes, it is very stable. All of our large applications use Database because of its stability.

The scalability of Database is good. I do have to say, however, that SQL Server for the Database engine is better if you want to run a bunch of small databases. My gripe about 12c is that they will make you pay extra for it even if you've already licensed Enterprise Edition. Also, it's not as easy to tune the pluggables because the underlying infrastructure is non-tuneable. Whereas with SQL Server, there's a little more flexibility. I run both engines: my SQL Server databases are for my little stovepipe stuff and my Oracle Database is for my big, enterprise-level stuff.

In my experience, technical support is really good, as well as the knowledge base. With the KB, I'm usually able to find the answers myself. And, Oracle has automated it to the point where it's very intuitive and helpful. I would, however, like to be able to call someone if needed like I used to. I remember having to wait for long period of time, but it's nice to talk to a person who can help.

From a storage and memory perspective, 11g is great. We also tried to install 12c on our machines, but we weren't happy about it because there were two version of it and we weren't ready to use the required plugins. We'll go to 12c next year, but I'd like to know whether we can go straight to 13c, which is already out.

11g has helped increase the performance of our database. We're also able to maintain it easier and better.

It's really not very user-friendly. Once installed and set up, there are still a lot of other steps we've had to take to get it functioning the way we want and need it to.

Deploying it required a lot of customization steps.

The stability is better than with 10g, in our experience with it.

The scalability is OK, but now that we're pushing 30GB of data per hour, there are problems with applications at the OIS level not handling the data correctly.

I performed the full setup myself but winged the rest. I had problems with the patches even though the upgrade installation went well. I spoke with DBA's in other companies and they had no problems with the patches. I still haven't come up with a solution.

It's a good product, better than older versions.