Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse vs. Azure SQL Database

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

We have found it's a great alternative for making older legacy applications work with online databases instead of only on-premises databases. We've converted over a dozen applications this way, and it has allowed our clients to have a distributed workforce using their applications without incurring the expense of a complete application rewrite.

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.

• Maintenance is always an issue, so using a cloud solution saves a lot of trouble.
• On premise solutions always suffer from fragmented implementations here and there, where several "dba's" keep track of security and maintenance. With a cloud database it's much easier to keep a central overview.
• Security options in SQL database are next level... data masking, hiding sensitive data where always neglected on premise, whereas you'll get this automatically in the cloud.

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

• One needs to be aware that some T-SQL features are simply not available.
• The programmatic access to server, trace flags, hardware from within Azure SQL Database is taken away (for a good reason).
• No SQL Agent so your jobs need to be orchestrated differently.
• The maximum concurrent logins maybe an unexpected problem.
• Sudden disconnects.
• The developers and admin must study the capacity and tier usage limits https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-subscription-service-limits otherwise some errors or even transaction aborts never seen before can occur.
• Only one Latin Collation choice.
• There is no way to debug T-SQL ( a big drawback in my point of view).

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

This is best solution as a DBA one could expect from a service provider and as a cloud service, it removes all your hassles.

Incentivized

The interfaces are intuitive once you are familiar with all the functions. The ability to use different tools to interact with the platform, such as directly via a browser or code editors such as VS Code or Visual Studio is a great option and allows for integrating withn the project and other testing and developing tools.

Incentivized

We give the support a high rating simply because every time we've had issues or questions, representatives were in contact with us quickly. Without fail, our issues/questions were handled in a timely matter. That kind of response is integral when client data integrity and availability is in question. There is also a wealth of documentation for resolving issues on your own.

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

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

We moved away from Oracle and NoSQL because we had been so reliant on them for the last 25 years, the pricing was too much and we were looking for a way to cut the cord. Snowflake is just too up in the air, feels like it is soon to be just another line item to add to your Azure subscription. Azure was just priced right, easy to migrate to and plenty of resources to hire to support/maintain it. Very easy to learn, too.

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

• Perfect for small and medium databases, being very cost effective.
• As a Platform as a Service, there is no concern about patches, upgrades and end of life.
• Be aware of security and network capabilities. The service cannot run in the VNET as Azure Virtual Machines do.