TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Oracle Database

Score8.4 out of 10

1,212 Reviews and Ratings

Get a Demo

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.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Oracle Database has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 1,212 ratings of Oracle Database's features
View all features

Top Performing Features

  • Encryption

    Data is encrypted in-motion and at rest, preventing unauthorized access and security breaches.

    Category average: 7.8

  • Disaster recovery

    Data can be recovered in the event of a disaster.

    Category average: 8

  • ACID compliance

    The database complies with ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability), ensuring transactions are processed reliably.

    Category average: 8.1

Areas for Improvement

  • Database locking

    Locking mechanisms prevent users from accessing data while it is being updated.

    Category average: 7.9

  • Multiple datatypes

    The database can store a variety of different datatypes.

    Category average: 7.7

  • Flexible deployment

    The database can be deployed in a variety of environments and operating systems.

    Category average: 7.3

Reviews

What users are saying about Oracle Database.
View all reviews

Oracle the most reliable Database solution

Incentivized
Deepjyoti BhowmickView profile
Senior Data Engineer in Information Technology at Accenture (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Oracle Database is the most reliable database I have ever used because of its wide range of enterprise-grade features, including high scalability, robust security, high availability, and strong performance optimization. Oracle, along with Toad, is a very powerful combo in most companies that maintain an enterprise-grade data warehouse. I still remember, in my first company, the entire large-scale data engineering project was built on top of Oracle PL/SQL. I was the owner of database objects, which consist of more than half a million lines of code. I have written multiple functions for front-end customers to showcase the dashboard, hundreds of procedures, packages to process the OLTP dataset, and inbuilt jobs to load daily OLTP data into the OLAP database.

Pros

  • Secure the dataset from unauthorized users using virtual private database policy enforcement. Thousands of customers used to see their data only in customized dashboards, but the data was sourced from main tables. This helps us to reduce the maintenance burden.
  • Oracle provides concurrent reads using multiversion concurrency control. This helped us to reload incremental data while previous data was still read by users.
  • Oracle database triggers were so supportive during the OLTP reload process. It helped us to maintain referential integrity without the extra headache of reloading dependent tables again and again.
  • The latest Oracle optimizer is at its best level. Companies that have the compliance issue to go to the cloud always prefer to use the Oracle database for its scalability and performance optimization. The default optimizer is working so well that it outperforms other on-premises databases.

Cons

  • Most of the architecture team find it difficult to suggest the Oracle is TCO. Oracle is more costly than peers. So mostly only large and medium organizations can afford this.
  • Badly written queries can increase costs, as they will use excessive system resources. To avoid this, always use the Oracle-recommended method. like CTE, use of partitions, etc.
  • Some of our architects always said there is a vendor lock-in with Oracle. Migration from Oracle to other platforms is costly. Postgres is champion here.

Return on Investment

  • ROI on our previous and current projects is awesome, as all these are big institutions that can absorb the TCO. But not recommended for small enterprises.
  • The Oracle optimizer is the champion for OLAP requirements. I never see performance like this except in horizontally scalable cloud databases. But competitors are doing well now. Oracle should plan it accordingly.
  • Like Oracle performance, security is also unmatched by its peers. That's the reason behind its industry recognition.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL and Teradata Vantage

Other Software Used

Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage, Informatica PowerCenter (legacy), Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Oracle Database for Enterprise Applications.

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our requirement was to choose a transactional RDBMS database system that can provide best-in-class High Availability and Disaster recovery, and Zero Downtime for maintenance. Oracle provides a robust, most advanced database backup and recovery (RMAN) feature. Enterprise security features such as data encryption, fine-grained auditing, database vault, etc., were another factor in choosing the Oracle database.

Pros

  • Active-Active Clustering (Oracle RAC).
  • High Availability & Disaster Recovery.
  • Zero-Downtime Maintenance(Rolling upgrade, EBR).
  • Robust Backup and Recovery feature.
  • Performance and Concurrency Architecture.

Cons

  • Oracle database is very complex to use, not beginners friendly.
  • PDB backup and restore still not very efficient in non-cloud environments.
  • Oracle database RAC features are not available with major public cloud providers (Azure, AWS) without using Exadata.

Return on Investment

  • Zero Downtime Application upgrade/deployment, higher possible SLA.
  • Zero or no data loss due to database unavailability. This one was one of the key reasons to migrate to Oracle.
  • Expensive Oracle database licenses drives our service cost higher.

Usability

Other Software Used

Azure SQL Database, PostgreSQL, Oracle Exadata, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing, Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Enterprise Manager

Oracle Review from cybersecurity engineer.

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use several Oracle versions installed on different operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Unix. We use Oracle DBMS in our cybersecurity product to alert customers to any vulnerabilities or patch requirements in their databases. Our cybersecurity product helps customers address new CVEs on the DBMS by raising an alert to the customers, usually DB Administrators, so that they can secure the Oracle DBMS against live attacks and apply patches to keep their Database secure.

Pros

  • Supports most of the Operating Systems like Unix, Linux and Windows Server.
  • It works well in high load environment under intense parallel transactions setup.
  • Highly reliable DBMS, especially RAC is very much reliable.
  • Well managed and predictable release of security patches.
  • We have highly scaled it from on-prem to a cloud cluster environment for our product.
  • One of the best-performing DBMSs on Linux machines under test delivers high throughput (QPS).

Cons

  • RAC and Data guard are complex and difficult to configure.
  • Manual configuration of Data Guard is difficult, whereas the Active Guard is really smooth.
  • Performance tuning in some aspect needs a good understanding of wait events and the SQL optimizer.

Return on Investment

  • Our product's ability to monitor the Oracle database has generated significant revenue from only a few customers, totaling $1mn.
  • An Oracle account helps analyze the patches and changes going into it, enabling the team to enhance the product and update it more quickly. It reduced the effort by more than 50%.
  • Being a closed-source code DBMS, it is difficult to ascertain the exact exploits of the vulnerability to provide patches to customers and requires reverse engineering.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB, MariaDB Platform and Db2

Other Software Used

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PyCharm, Eclipse, Oracle Java SE, Google Authenticator, Cisco AnyConnect, Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Most reliable database for your business needs

Incentivized
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Oracle Database for various applications, including ERP, application server backends, OLTP, data warehouses, and more. The Oracle database is highly reliable for performance, security and scalability. It provides advanced features like RAC and ASM, which make it useful for banking and high-transaction applications. Adding AI to it makes it very advanced in the AI era.

Pros

  • Highly scalable with the help of RAC cluster
  • No downtime and no data loss with dataguard and DR
  • Low maintenance with Oracle Autonomous Database

Cons

  • Licensing model of Oracle is complex
  • To manage it, highly skilled DBA are required
  • Using Oracle database with other cloud providers is not easy

Return on Investment

  • Database maintenance without any downtime saves a lot in business
  • With Oracle Autonomous database, infrastructure and staffing cost has reduced
  • It has a strong Oracle ecosystem that helps utilise its features sometimes without any further costs.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Aurora, Azure SQL Database and MariaDB Platform

Other Software Used

Amazon Aurora, Azure SQL Database, Google Cloud SQL

Oracle Database Review

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Oracle Database as the main data engine behind our SAP systems, the apps that integrate with SAP, and a handful of other business applications. It keeps our day‑to‑day operations running by handling the transactional data for things like finance, supply chain, and other core processes. Overall, Oracle Database sits at the center of several critical workflows and helps keep everything connected and stable across the organization.

Pros

  • Oracle Database handles large‑scale transactional workloads with speed and consistency, even under heavy SAP and integration traffic.
  • It provides strong reliability and recovery features that keep critical business systems running without data loss.
  • It scales smoothly as data volumes and application demands grow, without requiring major architectural changes.

Cons

  • Oracle Database has a very high learning curve, and the systems are quite complicated.
  • Oracle’s licensing is complex and difficult to navigate, especially when trying to optimize costs or understand feature entitlements. We were audited by Oracle and their team had to get clarification on several points internally because even the auditor did not completely understand it.
  • Patching and upgrading can be difficult and time consuming

Return on Investment

  • Our SAP databases are used by many teams globally within our org so downtime can have a large financial impact on our operations. Oracle has been very reliable, keeping unscheduled outages to a minimum.
  • Having skilled DBAs lets us build some custom integrations and reports that are used by our R&D and finance teams. I don't know our exact ROI numbers but it has been fundamental to our business.
  • We have quite a few legacy databases that cannot be moved to our newer platforms. It seems we will have to keep licensing Oracle forever, which is substantial expense.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SQL Server

Other Software Used

Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, VMware vSphere

Related Products

Products similar to Oracle Database that may also meet your needs.
All comparisons
MariaDB Platform
CompareLearn more
PostgreSQL
CompareLearn more