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Oracle Database

Score7.8 out of 10

1,185 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Oracle Database?

Oracle Database, currently in edition 23ai, is a converged, multimodel database management system. It is designed to simplify development for AI, microservices, graph, document, spatial, and relational applications.

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Reviews

What users are saying about Oracle Database.
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Oracle Database 12c for for your business needs

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use across the organization. We are just now making use of the new features in 12c.

Pros

  • Pluggable databases really help with consolidation.
  • Restore a table or table partition easily using RMAN.
  • Online migration of a Table Partition or Sub Partition.

Cons

  • License on virtual infrastructure.
  • Technical support needs to improve.
  • Data Guard setup needs to simplify and troubleshooting is still too complex.

Return on Investment

  • Very stable and better performance.
  • Better integration with other DB's and apps.
  • License cost high compared to other vendors.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SQL Server

Other Software Used

SAP HANA, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Microsoft SQL Server

Non-stop traffic with Oracle Database

Incentivized
Lisandro FernigriniView profile
Master Software Developer (Database Architect) in Information Technology at Neoris (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Oracle Database 12c has the ability to scale to support intensive workloads.
  • PL/SQL provides an efficient way to develop data-intensive processes that are able to interact with data without transferring it to an app server
  • Partitioning, Compression and Encryption are some of the optional features that enhance performance, reduce costs and secure the information stored in Oracle Database 12c

Cons

  • New (actually it is more than five years old) multi-tenant architecture is not as straightforward as SQL Server, but it has been enhanced in Oracle 12c Release 2 and later 18c and 19c.
  • Many features require additional licensing (either as options or as packs) that increase the total cost

Return on Investment

  • As a software center, we are able to work with a proven platform that is recognized by our customers as a solid and secure Database, leveraging their previous knowledge and experience with Oracle.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SQL Server

Other Software Used

Microsoft SQL Server

Usability

Why and why not to use Oracle12c Database?

Incentivized
Sarju PatelView profile
Sr Oracle DBA in Information Technology at DXC Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • Oracle12c Data Guard ensures high availability, data protection, and disaster recovery for enterprise data. It is one of the oracle finest solution for disaster recovery and data corruption. In this setup - You have one Primary and one or more standby DB in two or more different geographical locations. So, if the database hosted in one location goes down due to planned or unplanned outages, you can easily operate business from remote location database.
  • Oracle12c RAC provides Scale-up architecture. Oracle RAC ensures High Availability. In RAC architecture you have at least two or more physical servers with same configuration connected thru interconnect network. So, if one server goes down, you still have database running from the other(surviving) nodes. In this architecture - You can have appropriate on-demand services. You can easily scale up Servers, CPU, Memory.
  • Oracle12c has amazing Performance Tuning framework. You can very easily fine-tune databases running on Oracle12c. Some of the great features are Oracle ADDM, AWR report, ASH report, SQL report, SQL Plan Management, Tuning Advisor - SQL Tuning Advisor, SQL Access Advisor.
  • Oracle12c has great Back and Recovery solution using Oracle RMAN(Recovery Manager). Without much intervention and work, you can easily restore the database backup whenever and whereever you want.
  • Oracle12c provides great security standards that meet fundamental data security requirements - Data Confidentiality, Data Integrity and Data Availability.
  • Oracle Label Security, Oracle Data Redaction, Oracle Data Masking and subsetting, Transparent data protection, database storage encryption, Unified Auditing, and Oracle fine-grained audit are some great oracle features.

Cons

  • In Oracle Data Guard - Oracle standby database is most of the time passive and nothing happening on it other than applying the log. Even in Oracle Active Data Guard configuration - You can not do more than running the business SQL query on the standby. Oracle must come up with solution such that standby database can also be fully utilized as a full operational database.
  • Oracle should improve on Oracle internal locking mechanism, latch, and data concurrency. I have seen databases which runs fine with less number of ACTIVE user sessions. When ACTIVE user sessions are increased in the same database - db performance is deteriorated proportionately. If the database kernel has designed correctly, there won't be any db performance issue regardless of any number of user connections/sessions.
  • In current time - DB growth is very common, today your db size is 20GB, It may be 500GB at the end of the year, so on and so on. With respect to db size increase, Oracle must improve on RMAN(Recovery Manager) backup tool. The expectation is that faster backup and restore as and when needed. There is always a debate that - Please don't run RMAN backup,data pump export backup, and gather stats job during business peak hours as it will impact DB performance. Oracle database should have designed in such that Administrative jobs like Backup, data pump export and DB gather stats should not have db performance impact anytime, at any cost. Even Oracle claims that Oracle DBRM (Database Resource Manager) is solution to this problem, but, in actual, it doesn't address the problem in much better way.

Return on Investment

  • Positive Impact - I have been serving as a DBA to a Aviation Industry customer since 2009. Aviation Industry User community believes that Oracle database product is best product in the world. The reason would be it has been in the market for many years, more reliable product and the customer has more confidence in Oracle than others, has good market reputation, so many oracle expertise easily available whenever and where ever needed in affordable cost.
  • Positive Impact - Oracle12c with - ODA, Exadata, Big data appliance, Super cluster, and Oracle12c cloud offering are becoming popular day by day.
  • Negative Impact - Oracle licensing cost has been one of the most debatable topics in business user community every year.

Alternatives Considered

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control and Oracle Exadata Database Machine

Other Software Used

Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control

My Succinct Oracle Database Satisfaction Recap

Incentivized
Arthur ZubarevView profile
Senior Data Platform Consultant in Information Technology at Parsons Corporation (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Automated database objects validation: correctness of views, packages, triggers, and everything is built-in. This minimizes the risk of using malfunctioned software and makes it easy to fix broken code.
  • Rich programmability model: the database supports not only the very rich SQL but also PLSQL, Java and it has very good command-line tools that make change management easy and efficient.
  • Excellent for data warehousing with its support for automatic materialized views management, table sequences, data types, updatable cursors, advanced SQL as Windowing Functions, built-in upsert semantics via the Merge SQL.

Cons

  • The memory demand and management makes it impossible to run it in a container.
  • It is hard to perform local unit testing with Oracle even using the personal edition (aggressive all the available memory grab for itself).
  • Lack of built in database migrations (e.g. as Flyway).
  • The need to install the Oracle client in addition to its drivers.
  • The cost of running it, especially in the Cloud.
  • Comes with very spartan community grade client/management tools whereas the commercial offerings tend to demand a premium price.

Return on Investment

  • I am not 100% certain, but I heard that Oracle's licensing model is based on client metrics.
  • These days Oracle is seen by many as an outgoing database provider, especially if the Cloud use is intended, this is despite Oracle offers its own cloud, which remains nearly the least used in the World.
  • For decades, Oracle was a go-to solution in the corporate world as it advanced its database offerings very much and it remains very competitive

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Aurora, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL and Exasol

Other Software Used

Amazon Redshift, Amazon Aurora, Microsoft SQL Server

Dump the data and see the magic!!!

Incentivized
Meena BView profile
Information Technology Project Manager in Information Technology at Binghamton University (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Oracle Machine learning (formerly OAA) addresses a wide range of problems related to big data and data analytics. It helps the analytics team to analyze huge chunks of raw data obtained for research purposes. This data can come from open source, or medical equipment companies, and more.

Pros

  • Analyzing heaps of data dumped into the machine learning tool.
  • Giving the researcher an insight on which direction to proceed in order to get the desired results.
  • Can help perform a functional analysis before doing a deep dive.

Cons

  • Pricing for tools integrations is [a] big negative aspect.
  • Formatting is not as user friendly as it looks.
  • I encountered issues with loading large amounts of data for research purposes.

Return on Investment

  • Though it is a bit pricey when it comes to other standalone open source ML tools, the ability of Oracle Machine Learning on feature selection is icing on the cake.
  • A few of my peers have used it with R as well and they were all praises for the functionality it has to offer.
  • One of my research papers needed me to use Oracle Machine Learning with OML4py on a python environment and I absolutely was satisfied with the outcome.

Alternatives Considered

Oracle Cloud HCM and Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management

Other Software Used

Python IDLE, Spyder, Microsoft Teams

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