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.

We have 5 Oracle servers having 3 RAC and 2 Stand Alone servers.All using Oracle 12c R2 SE.

1 DR standalone server is also there .

Oracle was the first choice at the time of creating our application because of our very low load.

Now when our application has become mission-critical, Even with the SE version we are able to deal with a complete load very efficiently and effectively.

The most valuable features of this solution are the performance and its inbuilt services.

In Oracle we can find out most services are inbuilt. scalability, high availability, split brain handling , Null handling  ,it working of execution plan . All these features have helped us many times . 

As of Now Oracle has gained an image of Customer binding database.

Once some one opted for Oracle database , it becomes very difficult in many ways to move on other database.

As of now oracle can be considered as Top of the list and many of the database are not enough close to oracle concepts and it's standards so it's kind of responsibility to Oracle to bring a fair competition in market. 

In return ,it will help Oracle itself. Take an Example of Football. Consider Oracle a high level Club who have it's own Practice and playing Area but only his own rules are implemented. Any player who is a beginner and cannot afford such a high clubs will start practice in small arenas which have some what similar rules .Once Player's practice gave him confidence to go for a big club ,he will feel comfortable in choosing a club whose rules are known to him , Not someone for whom he has to change his playing technique. 

So Oracle should consider working in this direction so that he can keep the control over the wind of Market. 

I have been using this solution for two years.

We are currently using Oracle 12c SE Release 2.

In terms of stability, we know that Oracles releases quarterly batches but we have still been faced with many bugs over the last year.

I cannot say that it is stable.

This is an area that needs improvement.

It's a scalable solution.

As known to everyone, One of the best.

This is one of the portion where Oracle have to be little bit loose .I have raised only around 7-8 tickets including 2 P1 , but it always looks like I am talking to a bot with pre recorded  statements when the person is not able to answer. Most of the times information is attached , but they still insist very hardly to send it in there format so that there machine can read it .

Nope , Oracle was used from Starting.

All is easy, given that you must know what are you using it for.

Depending on the services included, it seems little bit expensive. 

In starting we didn't evaluate much, but giving the condition of ending support , we do not have any choice so we are looking for other options including upgradation as well.

Oracle is good for large scale environments.

New startups MUST always think of other options before going to Oracle.

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.

We are storing our data in Oracle. We collect data from a third-party vendor, transform it, and put it in Oracle. We use it as staging for report development.

The features are similar to any other database. Our company is a financial organization. Most financial organizations are run on Oracle. Oracle's security features are up to the mark. It is being approved by a person in our organization who controls and governs data. The solution has every security aspect that needs to be there in enterprise software.

The stability could be improved.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The tool is stable. I rate the stability an eight out of ten. We are still testing some of the use cases with more data. We must optimize it at the query level. We need to increase the resources if we have to get the throughput. The tool performs at a level where we get the expected results.

The tool is scalable. We have DevOps. We have 200 users in our organization. We use it extensively.

We have a team of 10 to 12 members to deploy and maintain the solution.

We work as an individual contributor. I work for an enterprise. The organization makes sure that the security is intact. They ensure that every security request comes or gets approved by a stakeholder or a data steward who knows what they are approving.

Organizations that want to use the tool must see if Oracle will be helpful for their use cases. My advice depends on the use cases. The use cases are decided at an architectural level depending on the organization's technology stack. Finance companies use Oracle as a front-end solution. If we use Oracle E-Business Suite, we will use Oracle Database. If we use Oracle Database, the organization will push it to every other application.

If we need to process data for monthly or weekly reporting and do a Delta load, Oracle is sufficient. Suppose we are already using it and paying for the license. In that case, using it for other applications is better than investing it in any other database and procuring hardware. It all depends on the use cases. Oracle is one of the oldest and most well-known databases in the market. It is stable and has a good development team.

Overall, I rate the product an eight and a half out of ten.

I use Oracle Database in my company for database management.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is very scalable and secure while offering very high performance. I have to ensure our company's system runs twenty-four hours, seven days a week for three-sixty-five days a year. The tool provides me with peace of mind since I know that nothing can go wrong in terms of fraudulent attempts where the product's security can be compromised. The aforementioned parameters are what I look at when it comes to the product.

There are no significant areas related to drawbacks in the product that I want to point out. When it comes to the product, it is the way you deploy or the cluster that makes some difference. How you implement or deploy the product can be an area of concern that can be made a bit easier. There is a close connection between the skill set of your company's team that handles the deployment and implementation phases and the user-friendliness that the system provides. There is a need to ensure that there is a trade-off between the skill set of the product's users and the ease of use the product offers. The aforementioned reasons make it very difficult to compartmentalize the issues in the product. It is important to ensure how well-versed your company's team is with the deployment of the product and with some of the parameters that need to be tuned up so that the product can offer high performance on your system. How the product can be made efficient in terms of performance is a function of your company's team's expertise rather than the product's capability.

I have been using Oracle Database for fifteen to twenty years.

The tool gets upgraded mostly by the company, but many times, immediate upgrades are not possible because of so many reasons. There are so many strategic decisions that may be made by the company over why we may not want to enroll in a new version, which might be available in the market because of the transition phase, testing, and all the efforts needed to take care of the process. The upgrade is just not a run in an environment simply because you have to test it out and do a battle test before even announcing that it is ready to enter the production phase. It is not always possible to put in so much effort at the time when an upgrade is announced, so it has to be prioritized later on. There are so many reasons why we will not be going in for the latest version after just some limited testing.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I have experience with IBM Db2.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

I recommend the product to others who plan to use it.

In general, the product is strong enough and offers high performance. I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

It depends on the environment. Most of our customers have been using multitenant options. Advanced Compression and Advanced Security are the most valuable features in most customer environments. And many customers are also leveraging Oracle Diagnostic and Tuning Packs to enhance the performance of the database. 

The primary concern is that Oracle is highly restricted in terms of the approved technologies where we can freely deploy Oracle Database or any other Oracle product. So, for example, if we deploy Oracle products on VMware vCenter or any virtualized environment using VMware technology, we need to license a complete cluster and a complete vCenter. So that is the costliest option for us. And since Oracle doesn't approve of Google Cloud infrastructure, that means we cannot leverage the dynamic and flexible features of Google Cloud. We have multiple offerings from Oracle and our side on this one. So if we want high performance, we have to get packs or options already bundled with Oracle Database at a slightly higher price. But they are cheaper if we purchase them separately.

Also, Oracle provides the Extreme Performance Database options where you have all the features already included with the database, which will overcome all the limitations that I mentioned earlier. So we can leverage different options, but the most important is to know what we need and how much we are ready to invest in setting up the Oracle solutions. Considering certain limitations on storing big data, so that's where Oracle lacks some features. But otherwise, it is one of the best databases available.

I've been working on Oracle Database and the complete Oracle Stack for the past six years. I'm not doing any implementation development work on Oracle products. I'm only managing their compliance part.

Oracle Database is pretty scalable. And if you are planning to implement or leverage the containers, Oracle has recently added enterprise containers into their stack, so we can leverage that technology to enhance the scalability of the database.

So with Oracle, technical support is provided mainly by the technical teams who are actually working on the packaging and deployment of the Oracle Database or other products.

Installing Oracle Database is pretty simple, and Oracle also provides a starter database, which will allow you to evaluate whether you meet the specifications or not. Then you can go ahead and deploy the other features and management packs.

Oracle Database has two different types of licenses. One is the Named User, and the other is the Oracle Processor. So Oracle Named User will cost you about $950 per license, and Oracle Processor will cost you around $47,500 per processor. And on the Named User part, you need a minimum number of users to ensure that you'll buy the minimum number of licenses. So for Enterprise Edition, the minimum requirement is 25 Named Users.

And you need to pay to add options and packs. All the options and packs are available at extra cost, but Enterprise Edition includes Spatial and Graph at no extra cost. Starting last year, Oracle offered Spatial and Graph for free with the Enterprise Edition. Then there is Standard Edition, a minimal deployment option. So you can deploy Standard Edition on a server with a maximum of two sockets. That's why Enterprise Edition is typical in most cluster and complex environments.

Oracle Database has various remarkable features like Advanced Security and Advanced Compression. Oracle Database has high availability and high performance. So in those terms, Oracle Database is much more reliable than its competitor. That's why most large enterprises choose Oracle Database technologies over others. But there are other databases with some features that Oracle doesn't have. For example, with MongoDB, you can store multimedia file content and anything, and they can hold a greater amount of data. So that's where they have an advantage on Oracle Database. And most of the social media sites, like Facebook, have implemented MongoDB as the database supporting their applications.

I would rate Oracle Database at eight out of 10. For those thinking about deploying the solution, my advice would to implement Oracle Database on physical servers to avoid noncompliance. And it will be less work to manage or calculate the required licenses on the physical server. If the customer wants to leverage the virtualization technology and has a more scalable environment, I would suggest having a dedicated cluster for Oracle products for licensing purposes. For example, if you keep five physical servers in a cluster, you need to license them only once. But if those five servers are running are part of five different clusters, you need to license all the five clusters. So having a dedicated cluster can save millions of dollars.

We use it for different applications in my company.

Stability and availability are the features I like the most in the solution. Transparent data encryption (TDE) is a feature I like the most in the product.

The product's price can be lower since it is a bit of an expensive solution.

Some engineers have the right skill set to resolve issues, but the support could be better.

I have been using Oracle Database for over ten years. I am an end user of the solution.

It is a stable solution.

The patching is an area that takes a long time, so we are trying to find another solution to minimize the downtime and do the patching.

Oracle Database is easier to scale up. The number of users using the solution in our organization depends on different applications normally, and it may be over a million being used by users for a customer.

The support from Oracle is okay. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The product's installation is difficult compared with other solutions since it can't support other platforms making the installation complicated.

The PoC phase to deploy the tool on-premises will take at least one week.

The solution is deployed on an AWS cloud.

Around two or three people were needed for installation.

My company has opted for perpetual licensing. We only need to make payments toward the licensing of the product.

It is not very easy to maintain Oracle Database. We need nearly twenty people in India to maintain the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The tool is efficient and fast compared to other alternatives. The tool's processing speed is fast, and we've experienced minimal hang-ups. This enables us to address queries within a shorter time frame. I wouldn't say it's just one particular feature, but overall, the efficiency and speed of Oracle Database have had a significant impact. Our support systems are more efficient, allowing us to accomplish tasks quickly. 

The tool's price gap is a major concern. It makes it hard for others to afford it and use it effectively. More people could benefit from its features if the pricing could be made more reasonable. Many companies choose cheaper options because of this affordability issue.

I have been using the product for seven to eight years. 

I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. 

We face scalability issues at times due to the vendors. I rate it a seven out of ten. My company has 150 users. I don't use it often, maybe once a week. However, some people use it for about eight hours daily.

I used MySQL before Oracle Database. 

I rate the tool's deployment an eight out of ten. We have deployed it on the cloud but have our backups on-prem. The setup and maintenance took around six months initially, with ongoing maintenance afterward. Since it was some time ago, I can't recall the exact details, but from initiation to finishing, it was approximately six months due to the various stages of software implementation.

The vendors helped with the tool's implementation. 

I rate Oracle Database's pricing a four out of ten. 

We don't have many security challenges, but we continue to review them because it depends on how they are set up. In terms of the database itself, it performs perfectly. However, we encountered some challenges with the software we used in conjunction with the database. These challenges are separate from the performance of the database itself.

Due to affordability concerns, I can't recommend it to everyone. I have to consider their budgets. Many opt for other options because Oracle's license costs are significantly higher than alternatives like MySQL. So, I would recommend it for enterprise-level use. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.