There's a large set of commands in PL/SQL so you can read things in and read things out much more easily than you can do in SQL.
Banner Developer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
There's a large set of commands in PL/SQL so you can read things in and read things out much more easily than you can do in SQL.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
Oracle Database, particularly PL/SQL, is a staple product for getting information out and putting information in. You can take those tools and put them in another environment. It's easy to use and makes the decision to move to another version a no-brainer.
What needs improvement?
There were issues that arose from a recent upgrade. These issues, however, were quickly resolved before we moved onto a subsequent upgrade.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the PL/SQL extension for Oracle Database since the early 90's.
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We had those issues from the upgrades, but, again, they were resolved before we moved to the next upgrade.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There are some enhancements that have been made to the database, especially PL/SQL. It changes as the product changes. It's not that difficult to find out what those changes are and keep up in order to maintain stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There are commands that you can include in your SQL to make sure you've got enough workspace to do what you need to do.
How are customer service and support?
I've used it for so long that I haven't needed to contact them. I haven't run into an issues where I haven't been able to get data out from or put data into the database. I am, however, still learning some feature of PL/SQL, for which I'm using Oracle's Ask Tom a lot. I've found that this Oracle support site is very helpful for reviewing documentation to figure out what I'm missing from my own knowledge.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup wasn't too complex, although there were the modifications with upgrades that caused some issues. Again, these issues were resolved prior to our next upgrade.
What other advice do I have?
The system does what you tell it to do; it doesn't necessarily do what you want it to do. You have to really ground yourself in education before you are safe working with the tools. The tools are very powerful, but at the same time, there are rules behind what it does and you have to know what they are.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Principal Production Support Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable features for us are its capability and reliability. It's dependable, rarely going down or exhibiting instabilities.
Valuable Features
The most valuable features for us are its capability and reliability. It's the best performing database solution I've used, and it's dependable, rarely going down or exhibiting instabilities.
Improvements to My Organization
We have a lot of applications that are critical to our business running on Oracle Database. I think it's pretty feature rich, although we don't use all of the features that are available. It's a very solid platform for applications, giving us confidence in the data it maintains and our access to it.
Room for Improvement
There are so many applications that run with Oracle Database that it's difficult getting our various IT personnel to get tested and certified for it. It's like herding cats. And although the upgrades are not technically difficult, it is difficult to manage all the applications and the people who work with it.
Use of Solution
We're mostly on version 11.2.0.4. We've played just a little bit with version 12.
Deployment Issues
We've had no issues with deployment.
Stability Issues
It's very solid. We've had no issues with Oracle DB being unstable. Again, its reliability is one of the best features for us.
Scalability Issues
We have not had to scale it to a great degree, but we've had no real issues with capacity and we have confidence that Oracle DB will scale as needed.
Customer Service and Technical Support
Technical support is generally quite good. We've been overall very satisfied with Oracle's support.
Initial Setup
I was involved in the setup of it 25 years ago and it was a transition to Unix at the time. I can't say it was that straightforward, but It was also not unexpectedly complicated.
Implementation Team
We generally do a major Oracle version upgrade every year or two and do a major patch upgrade at least once a year if we don't do a major version upgrade. We do upgrades in-house.
Other Advice
I've seen that things are evolving very fast since we first installed Oracle DB 25 years ago and since I've been a DBA for the last 30 years. We've got a lot of expertise in database administration. Honestly, that's being de-emphasized by the cloud offerings for the whole data center. Having people look at rack hardware and install the operating system is being de-emphasized. I think somebody starting out, if they are a not a big operation, they ought to look seriously at using the cloud as an alternative to having to support a lot of IT functions in-house.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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January 2026
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Presenter at a consultancy
Gathering Statistics and Partitions
Valuable Features:
Partitions and the various methods available
Room for Improvement:
Statistics for the Partitions
Lack of support for Oracle Text Indexing with all the various partitioning options
Other Advice:
Gathering Statistics is important for query plans. However, in a partitioned table environment, it would seem that each partition of a table would have about the same number of records especially when the major key is something like transaction date. So why not have an option to copy the statistics from a "standard partition" when a new partition is added? OR allow for parameters in the table partition metadata to store and update the values that have to be copied for the statistics. The partition is not fully loaded until the end of the "transaction day" and maybe the auto-statistics gathering processes can then make the updates to the finer points.Update:Gathering Statistics on Partitioned Tables using the INCREMENTAL = TRUE setting for the table keeps the statistics gathering humming nicely. A bit of a "to do" for the first time though. Also need to be aware that some disk space will be used to store statistics which can be referenced for the next run of gathering statistics (augmenting?)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Database Expert at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Plus- stability, minus- SQL*NET for variety platforms
Valuable Features:
Reliability, CBO
Improvements to My Organization:
Processing and accounting of credit card transactions.
Use of Solution:
16 years
Stability Issues:
I've encountered stability issues with Oracle on Windows Server after regular updates.
Implementation Team:
In-house implementation
ROI:
16 months
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Project Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Serve your business confidently and help it grow with Oracle RDBMS.
What is most valuable?
From a business stand point, the ability to go to market, compliance and business enabling is what matters most. Oracle database has rich functionalities that helped us design a system that meets our business' changing needs. However I was responsible for maintaining service levels. My focus was on how to provide consistent response time and the throughput amidst changing business needs and growing data. Oracle database offers one of the industry's best diagnostic infrastructure that enables expert DBA to know exactly how system behaves under different workload, thus able to proactively prevent any performance bottlenecks or quickly respond to exceptional situation or even be able to predict future performance.
How has it helped my organization?
Databases are usually unknown to business users. The business users draw value by using the system to operate the business processes and making the decision at various stages. Businesses do not expect exceptions in their daily routine from a computerized system. Having said that, consistently performing systems enables businesses to serve the customer in consistent manner.
What needs improvement?
Today we do lots of database consolidations, which means multiple applications reside in the same physical databases using one or more schema. I would like to see some seamless feature to simply drag and drop all the objects belong to one application from one database to another database.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Oracle database releases from 8i to 11g since 2001. We used it primarily as a database component of Oracle Application 11i. Subsequently we continue to expand the usage to many new application systems including business intelligence and B2B applications.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Oracle databases are the most reliable, accompanied by good documentation and support. We never encountered an issue during the deployment which was due to a product issue.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Any system goes through a phase of stabilizing which takes a fair amount of time. Fortunately, with Oracle database, this time has reduced significantly.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Not in our line of business.
How are customer service and technical support?
Since 2001, I have enjoyed reliable service from Oracle Support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We always used Oracle Database. We also have SQL Server databases serving many small-medium scale applications. And they perform better as well. In my experience, SQL server databases offers stable database environment. It is easy to use and quick to learn for new DBAs with same windows UI.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was certainly complex, specifically from the application standpoint. We had deployed many new modules that Oracle Application 11i offered in their version 11.5.4. These products had significant impact on database performance. There were also many customizations in the application system. It took us almost 6 months to establish consistently performing system environment.
What about the implementation team?
In Singapore we implemented through Oracle Consulting. They are one of the best in the industry with a huge amount of dedication.
What other advice do I have?
Oracle database is one of the best database systems with largest population of experts around helping the global communities. Hence the knowledgebase is rich and vast. However, workout a strong business case in order to get it approved by the sponsor. As a technology expert, IT function needs clear strategy while selecting one product over another.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Database Manager at a tech company with 51-200 employees
A powerful Relational Database Management System that offers a large feature set
Valuable Features:
• Oracle ensures high level security by performing each transaction in isolation from others. The database management as well as user management of oracle is very effective
• Provides data consistency as well as data concurrency.
• Oracle database guarantees that the data returned by a single query is committed and consistent with respect to a single point in time.
• Supports very large size databases. So it is very beneficial for multinational organizations having billion of records.
• Oracle database ensures high level availability by providing solutions for fixing problems rapidly and minimize both planned and unplanned downtime. These solutions help enterprises maintain business continuity 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Room for Improvement:
• Due to its high cost, oracle is not the first priority for the organizations having budget constraints.
• A full time oracle Administration staff is always needed for the complex configuration of oracle.
• After installation, oracle drains lot of memory causing slow performance of system
• Oracle is not popular with open source code. MYSQL is a better option.
Other Advice:
Oracle is a powerful relational database management system that ensures high level security, consistency and data concurrency. Oracle architecture is split between the logical design and the physical design. This structure means that for large-scale distributed computing, the data location seems local and transparent to the user, allowing for a more modular physical structure that can be added to and altered without affecting the activity of the database, its data, or users. The sharing of resources in this way allows for very flexible data networks whose capacity can be adjusted up or down to suit demand, without degradation of service. It also allows for a robust system to be devised as a single point failure can’t bring down the whole database across a network.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Presenter at a consultancy
Beware: Need to monitor disk space
One thing that is annoying is the need to monitor the disk space available. In Oracle, the DBMS can monitor the utilization of a data file(s) but when the data files become full, the DBMS cannot just add a new data file and continue. Everything comes to a deadly halt. This approach makes no sense because the solution is just to add a new data file. So all that Oracle has to provide for are the parameters we want for all data files that are added "automagically" and we do not then run into such deadly issues.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
We have a script which monitors space left based on what the user_segments reports as used. We have also started to use bigfIle tablespaces.
ETL Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Works very well, suites all enterprises, and is easy to learn and deploy
Pros and Cons
- "It is user-friendly. It didn't take me much time to learn it."
- "There are a few errors for which Oracle doesn't provide detailed information. It doesn't clearly indicate the columns or lines for which we are getting an error. It would be better if they provide more detailed information for such errors."
What is our primary use case?
Our clients are using it.
What is most valuable?
It is user-friendly. It didn't take me much time to learn it.
We can understand the real issue or message for most of the errors. We can easily understand why we are getting an error, which is helpful for fixing it.
What needs improvement?
There are a few errors for which Oracle doesn't provide detailed information. It doesn't clearly indicate the columns or lines for which we are getting an error. It would be better if they provide more detailed information for such errors.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for about 4.3 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
They are responding on time. I'm satisfied with their response.
How was the initial setup?
For me, it's easy.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend it to others. It is suitable for small, medium, and large enterprises, and I haven't faced any issues with it so far.
For me, it is a 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Oracle has grown with rich features year after years and that's what it makes a #1 RDBMS database today.