Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs. Oracle Exadata vs. ParAccel

II would recommend Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse to someone looking to fully automate the transferring of data especially in a warehouse scenario though I can see the elasticity of the suite that is offered and can see it is applicable in other scenarios not just warehouses.

Incentivized

Oracle Exadata is well-suited for environments where massive performance for Oracle databases is required. Storage indexes reduce the unnecessary I/O. Smart Flash
Cache accelerates random reads/writes.

Our OLTP application demands very high concurrency. Multi-node Exadata provides high availability and zero downtime during DB patching. It comes with lots of built-in automations, so it reduces many routine tasks for sysadmins, like network, storage, and VM configuration, and it also reduces many Oracle DBA tasks, like Oracle software installation, patching, and upgrades.

Incentivized

Actian matrix is not good for small data sets. If you have a limited data pool, or do not plan on having multiple users/clients accessing a data source, stick with a more traditional relational database model - Access for the truly small user base, or a DB2 or Oracle back end if your going to have multiple users, and moderate sized data. Actian is for LARGE data sets (Big Data, in the industry parlance). Millions of rows of data from multiple sources with various down stream systems accessing the database. It is for data analytics of large data groups and intense data mining.

Incentivized

• Very easy and fast to load data into the Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse
• Exceptionally fast retrieval of data joining 100 million row table with a billion row table plus the size of the database was reduced by a factor of 10 due to how Oracle store[s] and organise[s] data and indexes.
• Flexibility with scaling up and down CPU on the fly when needed, and just stop it when not needed so you don't get charged when it is not running.
• It is always patched and always available and you can add storage dynamically as you need it.

• Oracle Database : Deliver industry-leading security, high availability and scalability with Oracle Database, which has been significantly enhanced to take advantage of the Oracle Exadata Storage Servers.
• Exadata Smart Scan : Improve query performance by offloading intensive query processing and data mining scoring to scalable intelligent storage servers.
• Smart Flash Cache : Transparently cache 'hot' read and write data to fast solid-state storage, improving query response times and throughput. Exadata systems use the latest PCI flash technology rather than flash disks. PCI flash delivers ultra-high performance by placing flash directly on the high speed PCI bus rather than behind slow disk controllers.
• Hybrid Columnar Compression : Reduce the size of data warehousing tables by 10x, and archive tables by 50x, to improve performance and lower storage costs for primary, standby, and backup databases. Query high, query low, archive high and archive low.
• Infiniband Network : Connect multiple Oracle Exadata Database Machines using the InfiniBand fabric to form a larger single system image configuration. Each InfiniBand link provides 40 Gigabits of bandwidth–many times higher than traditional storage or server networks.
• Petabyte Scalability : Easily scale data warehouse to support enterprise data growth.

Incentivized

• Super fast. Aggregate query such as SUM(), Count() returns result within seconds from a table with more than billion records.
• Excellent data compression.
• Easy maintenance. We managed this database without having a full time DBA.
• Support ANSI SQL and ODBC/JDBC. It's easy to connect to this database from other systems.

Incentivized

• It is very expensive product. But not to mention, there's good reasons why it is expensive.
• The product should support more cloud based services. When we made the decision to buy the product (which was 20 years ago,) there was no such thing to consider, but moving to a cloud based data warehouse may promise more scalability, agility, and cost reduction. The new version of Data Warehouse came out on the way, but it looks a bit behind compared to other competitors.
• Our healthcare data consists of 30% coded data (such as ICD 10 / SNOMED C,T) but the rests is narrative (such as clinical notes.). Oracle is the best for warehousing standardized data, but not a good choice when considering unstructured data, or a mix of the two.

Incentivized

• The process of patching and upgrade of Exadata server components could be improved with a goal to minimize the overall effort, make it fully automated and transparent.
• Improved guidelines and possibly more sophisticated tools for sizing of new Exadata servers for migration from old legacy hardware.

Incentivized

• Some of the bugs were annoying and QA definitely needs improvement
• Connectivity to Informatica and ETL providers
• Workload management could be better like when you compare with Teradata

Incentivized

Because

• It is really simple to provision and configure.
• Does not require continous attention from the DBA, autonomous features allows the database to perform most of the regular admin tasks without need for human intervention.
• Allows to integrate multiple data sources on a central data warehouse, and explode the information stored with different analytic and reporting tools.

Incentivized

I am comparing Exadata with the Oracle RAC database experience. In addition to Oracle RAC features, Exadata provides automatic performance optimization through Smart Scan and storage indexes. Deep integration with the Oracle ecosystem and tight coupling with Oracle Enterprise Manager
for monitoring and management. Some downsides of Exadata are: a steep learning curve, concepts like cell offloading, IORM, and flash cache behavior aren’t intuitive initially. Operating
Exadata requires specialized DBA skills.

Incentivized

I wish to give higher rating for the speed and efficiency in handling the queries, but only 6 because of consistent bugs we encounter

Incentivized

• Faster initial response
• Trained professionals
• Very helpful in resolving issues

Incentivized

Understanding Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is really simple, and Autonomous databases are even more. Using shared or dedicated infrastructure is one of the few things you need to consider at the moment of starting provisioning your Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse.

Incentivized

Leader failover setup is the toughest and lack of proper documentation is making things tough.

Incentivized

As I mentioned, I have also worked with Amazon Redshift, but it is not as versatile as Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse and does not provide a large variety of products. Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse is also more reliable than Amazon Redshift, hence why I have chosen it

Incentivized

Oracle Exadata Database Machine had the best performance overall hands down. It clearly beat the competition and we were seeing 1000X improvement on SAP HANA. Oracle Exadata Database Machine beat that without us refactoring our code. To achieve that in HANA, we had to refactor the code somewhat. Now this was for our limited POC of 5 use cases. Given the large number of stored procedures we had in Sybase, we need to capture more production metrics but we are seeing incredible performance.

Incentivized

Actian Matrix is our first big data analytics storage platform, and as I was not involved in the POC process to compare it to other products out on the market, unfortunately I cannot say if it is better than other Big Data storage options. I can say that it out performs products such as Oracle or UDB in regards to the volume of data it can easily index and handle.

Incentivized

• Overall the business objective of all of our clients have been met positively with Oracle Data Warehouse. All of the required analysis the users were able to successfully carry out using the warehouse data.
• Using a 3-tier architecture with the Oracle Data Warehouse at the back end the mid-tier has been integrated well. This is big plus in providing the necessary tools for end users of the data warehouse to carry out their analysis.
• All of the various BI products (OBIEE, Cognos, etc.) are able to use and exploit the various analytic built-in functionalities of the Oracle Data Warehouse.

Incentivized

• Single support from a single vendor with both machine and database from Oracle, which is costing us less.
• With Exadata, we need less technical manpower and less technical support. A business transaction with the integrated and centralized database helps us focus on other business needs.
• We don't need to buy additional licenses and Hardware for the next 3 to 5 years.

Incentivized

• ROI is great, less spending on full time DBA and that money could be use to add additional node.
• Negative - Not many developers are well aware of this tool, it takes some time to learn.

Incentivized