Oracle Database

Very stable

Fast

Resilient

Hard to upkeep

Needs a lot of tech support

Complicated to administer

Seamless Cloud Connectivity

Industry Best Reliability

Additional Oracle Product Bundling

Speed of extractions and uploading

Custom Data Manipulation

Oracle queries are very fast as compared to some of the other relational databases I've worked with.

Oracle provides a very expressive and powerful programming language for functions, stored procedures, and packages.

The ability to group functions and procedures together into a package is also very convenient.

The biggest con is the price tag, even a small instance of Oracle Database can be very pricey.

Oracle provides query components outside of the ANSI standard which are great for fine tuning and optimization, but make it nearly impossible to port your Oracle instance over to another RDBMS.

Backups and Data migrations to another server are non trivial.

Supports critical rdms function

The security and encryption options

SQL function with support for C library

The replication options

Data and storage partition

Cost

Support JSON

It excels in our need for multi-user and multi-functional business transactions.

It handles large quantities of data easily and quickly

Oracle is very complex and requires skills staff in its use

It can be difficult at times to track down issues that occur, however there is a large community of users that are available to assist.

Users interact with Oracle Database using applications and tools that use SQL, a widely known language that is familiar to a wide range or database administrators, developers, application support staff, and managers. Because of this fact, members are fully engaged in all aspects of application planning, development, and application management. This full engagement improves the ability of the organization to manage applications and promotes teamwork.

Oracle Database has robust enterprise-class features, such as partitioning, Data Guard, RAC, RMAN, memory management, and diagnostics, that lead to robust, scalable applications.

Oracle Database works well with widely accepted application programming interfaces, such as JDBC and .NET, and application development tools, such as Eclipse and SQL Developer. As a result, application development can get started quickly, and make rapid progress.

Some Oracle customers find the licensing costs too onerous.

Sometimes Oracle Customer Support is unable to identify the root cause of a problem, or a fix.

Some customers who continue to modify applications that are running on an obsolete version encounter bugs that are difficult to get assistance with.

Data Indexing - 12c seems to be superior at this when compared to prior versions

Integration with other Oracle products - as is often the case, the latest version of one oracle product works best with the latest of another. Having a uniform version across all oracle products in a company is just wise.

Security: the product provides superior data encapsulation.

I've not found anything from an end user perspective that I dislike or feel needs improving at this time.

The simplicity of the application.

It seamlessly allow for large data storage.

The pricing in some cases are better than most data storage products.

Using the back button. Oracle responds properly to the back button in the application than the browser. Its for good reason but, annoying.

Upgrading isn't user friendly unless you a Oracle prodigy. I'd ask them for a guide that allows unfamiliar users to upgrade with confidence

Using SQL can be much more optimized in Oracle Database with a number of highly effective tools included

Technical support can be easily obtained at a sometimes high cost.

Incredible flexibility with the ability to upgrade the application with new modules.

Oracle database can be challenge to utilize with beginners. Its interface and amount of features can be daunting for those with limited experience using a database. It is not a simple database to plug in an go.

The products costs can be prohibit for smaller organizations and companies. It can take a number of hours to setup a database and training may also be required.

The product is simply feature rich beyond the needs of smaller companies making it less effective unless there is a need for some of its features.

Very fast transactions.

Security. It is practically Impenetrable.

Highly configurable

New keywords, identity changes, visible columns. All to make your DBA life easier.

It is basically a database engine and powerful data mature. All it does, it does well, so you just have to implement new features at the same speed of its rivals

If you are a newbie, Oracle may have a learning curve too high. It is strongly recommended to follow specialized courses to achieve maximize their use.

The migration tools can be overly complex

Oracle DB is having quite a lot of interesting features. Read consistent for online transactions with rollback features. Table partitioning, Index partitioning, data caching, backup and recovery, expdp/impdp, V$ views and monitoring , memory management. Very large data support due to table partitioning.

Maintenance - Table Partitioning has many features like switch partitions, Automatic storage management, online index rebuild.

Data guard - Very reliable DR solution with 100% replication, easy to start on DR site. Can be used for read only.

Expdp/Impdp - Quite fast data download/upload to DB. Migrations becomes quite easy and fast.

OEM - DB monitoring

Memory structures - Caching, SGA, PGA, session history and V$ views to check DB health

I would like to see the rename USER feature. That can bring sweeping benefits in many cases.

Unexpected LOAD due to features - If some parallel server parameters are not fixed wisely, the system can overload server/DB and DB will stick.

A lot of parameters, need to reduce and readjust them.

In memory feature has been improved substantially

Database tuning and optimization less time consuming (i.e. more self tuning than before)

Query optimizer seems to have once again improved such that existing apps simply run faster

Oracle enterprise manager for database management still time consuming as OEM is a production app all by itself

Price for enterprise edition add-on such as partitioning, in-memory and such are simply too expensive

The optional diagnostics and tuning packs simply need to be part of the database (i.e. not optional cost add-on)

Clustering with Real Application Clusters (RAC)

External data access with External Tables

XML navigation and parsing with XMLDB

Object creation with user defined types (UDT)

Cost of important options (as Parallel Query, Partitioning, AWR, etc.)

Cost of licensing

Lack of DevOps features support

Performance. Oracle is really fast at solving queries with high volume. For us, it behaves quite well including during peaks of processing like period closing or with very demanding processes (such as Project Account module or the calculation of absorption costing in Brazil).

Scalability. We have been growing both in user number and in services that run in Oracle, and Oracle Database allowed us to accompany this grow.

Security. As a SOX compliant company, we are obliged to accomplish with a lot of requirements, such as generating and keeping audit trails, ensure the proper segregation of duties and permits, etc. With Oracle we were we have been able to comply with all the requirements that our auditor demands.

We are not a really heavy user of Oracle database, and there are a lot of features that we never even tried.

Perhaps Oracle should provide better free tools to monitor the database. We are using a third party tool.

Oracle Database is based on PL/SQL Programming construct which helps the developer or the administrator of the database to have a quick get to know about the product, as most programmers would have basic knowledge of PLSQL programming.

From the end user's perspective as the enterprise application and Oracle databases have seamless integration amongst them, it is hardly a concern to the end user of the enterprise application.

It also helps with seamless integration of an ETL tool like Informatica etc., with the Oracle Database as we already have inbuilt drivers for Oracle with most of the ETL tools available in the market.

With Oracle DB2 Licensing there is a limit on database size - say up to 15 GB etc.

Slowly but steadily Oracle is pushing their customers to move from 11g to the 12c version which has more powerful functionality. But with the higher version, the pricing also burns your pocket.

The upgrade which quite often comes up with Oracle products is a pain for the administrator. They need to bundle all the changes and come up with one package instead of frequent updates for bug fixes and new functionalities.

High reliability. Oracle databases are known for delivering high integrity of stored data and excellent performance.

Compatibility with top notch security software. We use data loss prevention and backup software that work perfectly with Oracle. We didn't want to change these products since they were solid and we knew how they work.

Rock-Solid Architecture, very easy to organize, manages memory efficiently, running complex queries is extremely easy. Super advanced engine.

I think that Oracle scares companies sometimes with their prices and learning curve. We found that a previous administration considered Oracle a few years before we got it. Enterprise Software providers tent to confuse and scare customers when they deliver a proposal to small and mid-sized organizations.

Standardization: Oracle RDBMS software is the same on-premise (on standard hosts and on engineered systems) and in cloud.

Maximum Performance: Oracle Database can support different workloads and the performance can be extremely high when using Oracle Exadata.

Multitenancy: this is one of the best new features of 12c release. Oracle RDBMS can now support the possibility of creating a container database with several pluggable databases inside. Multitenancy can lead resource reduction and simple management of the databases.

Far Sync: using Oracle Data Guard option, you can reduce the risk of unplanned outages even in case of disaster. You can syncronize a remote database with near-zero data loss suing far sync instances.

Learning: you need a specialist to install/mantain Oracle Databases. There are sereral factors to take care: installation, tuning, backup & recovery and so on.

Cost: it's expensive for small companies.

Oracle 12c has improved its ability to move data by its improved version of data pump, as well as monitoring of data pump jobs.

It's improved Cloud Control monitoring tool that gives you more ability and tools than the former 11g grid control.

Improved documentation and installation of critical patch updates, with the use of Opatch, has helped maintain a fully patched and secured environment for us.

As in 11g, there wasn't much improvement on ORA-*** error messages in 12c. This was somewhat of a disappointment, there still isn't much information provided for problems that arise for certain oracle issues.

Documentation for Oracle still can be somewhat murky and hard to navigate. This is not always the case, but there still seems to be a myriad of irrelevant data in the search results.

Oracle DBCA creates databases with extra cost options enabled by default, which could be detrimental if a user accidentally uses the extra cost option, such as OLAP or Active Data Guard. We often have to run scripts to turn these options off manually, if they can't be turned off using the DBCA.

Stable data source that has never crashed in our business area

Wonderful tech support that is approachable and helpful

Oracle drivers are compatible with most BI applications

Slow performance as compared to Teradata

Does not provide the flexibility or the speed like other big data competitors

The ability to analyze large datasets within memory and in realtime without having to schedule tasks and MAYBE get information out a few hours later.

Great vendor support, as well as third party support. Documentation is everywhere.

The ability to go beyond simple SQL and use programmatic logic through PL/SQL without having to leave the environment.

EXPENSIVE! I'd love to use this for personal research, but going to keep using F/OSS tools! All ironically owned by Oracle (the corporation) at this point! That said, it saves us money within the enterprise using it!

Installation...I have set up test installations of prior versions for departmental use outside the enterprise installation (former position)...compared to MySQL, it was a pain! Then again, if you are going to use this, you might as well get someone that knows what they are doing! I studied to be a psychologist, not a systems administrator (though I have pretended to be both!!!)

Even though I love the PL/SQL language, I still drop down to PHP (running at the command line...don't judge, its what I learned in undergrad) to do a lot of complex work, which is not the greatest idea when having to share between colleagues!

When the user connects to a plugged database, the environment looks exactly as if he/she connected to to a traditional database.

The Oracle Database 12c is a VERY stable release. There were not nearly as many bugs to fix as there were with other releases.

We upgraded from 11g to 12c, and the transition was easy and seamless. The user retesting was really kept to a minimum.

MYSQL has a much lighter footprint data repository and is much cheaper for applications with a limited vertical or horizontal customer focus.

There are compatiblilty issues with older clients like 8i. That means that legacy interconnectivity is a problem.

The connections to other ETL tools might need a lot of drivers and system environment variable configurations.

Oracle has gotten better with streamlining installation. Oracle Database 12c is much easier to install and configure than previous releases of Oracle software.

Oracle Database 12c is a robust platform for mission critical applications. We use the RAC (Real Application Clusters) edition of Oracle Database 12c. This allows us to spread workload across multiple servers and provides fault tolerance. If one node goes down, all systems remain operational.

Oracle Database 12c includes RMan backup. This has been improved so that it is easy to backup the database without down time and to recover should any failures occur.

Oracle Database 12c is able to handle large quantities of data with extremely good performance. My organization happens to be the largest user of the ERP software that we run, and it is able to handle tables with millions of rows.

One of the hardest things about dealing with Oracle Database 12c is the optimizer. They have made many improvements to it, but in 12c they came out with some initialization parameters that were not well documented. Some of these were set to default when we upgraded to the 12c release. Initially this made some software modules perform slower than they had before. It took us quite a bit of work to learn how to set everything so that we had better performance than we had in Oracle Database 11. We had to open several support calls with Oracle to get performance issues resolved. This could be improved if they added more documentation in this area.

Another issue in dealing with Oracle database 12c is cost. Educational institutions have more limited budgets and each additional licensed option costs additional money. Names of some options are changed and it is hard to determine what you need and how to purchase options in the most cost effective manner.

Oracle has a large international support network when companies have problems with their software. There are vast amounts of online resources in their knowledge base. However, it is often difficult to sort through the irrelevant articles or unanswered questions. It would be nice if they made it easier to find information limited to the version you are on, or only show questions that have been answered.

Ease of upgrading from recent versions (10g/11g) to enable extended support application lifecycles. This is really critical to most installations, since user re-testing will be minimized, and existing administrative skills are leveraged in the new version without a steep learning curve.

12c is a very stable release. Ever since participation in the early Beta cycles, we emphasized to Oracle, our need to not revisit extended bugfix cycles attempting to get an early release version to work in production environments experienced in many previous releases.

12c's internal automatic performance management features have improved over 11g, with less re-adjustments constantly occurring allowing the database to adapt to changing demand requirements (such as OLTP during the day, but heavy OLAP at night) and not having to worry about the overhead of enabling features such as AMM (automatic memory management) or ASM (the storage-related equivalent) and watching the database tend to fight with itself trying to optimize the settings.

12c is a feature-laden installation. The footprint of the software (Oracle Home) alone is about 4+GB, without any data storage added, which translates, as most new products seem to emphasize, into you're getting everything in one box. While the initial Oracle Universal Installer experience can be as simple as choosing one of 2 pre-defined database templates and clicking through 5 [Next] buttons, the jump to choosing the 3rd option (an Advanced Installation) goes from those 5 screens to over 35, which may overwhelm a new user wanting to just install a database to support a purchased application. I'd personally like to see Oracle ship pre-configured templates with its own applications to give new installers an option of choosing an application-optimized version template to further speed up the initial setup process.

12c's version of listener technology is no longer compatible (nor can it be forced to be compatible) with 9i or lower legacy databases. An 8i or 9i client cannot connect to a 12c database listener. So for those with legacy interconnectivity challenges, you end up installing an edge-of-end-of-life 10g database as a go-between, just to bridge the old technology to the new ones. There should have been an option to support either a limited down-grade compatible configuration, or for a secondary light client installation that could at least support database links between the versions to provide a migration path other than multiple jumps to keep connectivity with older applications. Other database companies have always supported this, even if just to a limited extent (because it does expose security risks in the process.)

12c isn't the end-of the-road version by any stretch of the imagination. If you've studied Oracle's most recent roadmap planning within the last 5 years, new releases are being timed for every 2 years, with major jumps and major technology uplifts in the process. Compared with the periods when we could run 8i for almost 10 years, without considering upgrades, that timeline has been cut by 80% shorter.

Data Security - With the Database Vault Option (non-core 12c and licensed separately) installed you can provide different 'restricted' views of the datasets to users and even DBAs/support staff. So ensuring sensitive data is only seen by those who need to see it. Saying that the normal features within Oracle 12c make it the most secure and user access configurable.

Data Availability - To us a significant factor - So 12c has available ASM (Automatic Storage Management) - that basically takes over the disk from the OS and thus allows data to be managed much more effectively and the multi-node model that Exadata (and RAC) provide. With this multi-node approach data can be processed by multiple nodes (great for large datasets) and your data is duplicated efficiently between nodes in case of a node failing.

Data Exports & Imports - To me this is important, as without being able to get data in the database you won't have a lot of use of the database! Oracle provides a great toolset for getting data in and out of the database in a quick manner - either entire database dumps or exports/imports of single tablespaces, tables or indexes.

Database Enterprise Manager - Complex yes but this tool provides a great interface into how the database is working. Access can be configured to allow a full DBA or a subset to allow technical users an insight into how their queries are performing.

At a techie level we can create tables with many thousands of partitions and indexes on the partition level - then compress the older partitions (which are still available for queries). Same goes for indexes and we ca rebuild indexes the partition level rather than one huge index. This really works well when importing large datasets.

Overall Oracle is a complex beast and requires a firm understanding of computing architecture/principles to set up, develop for and to support. So be prepared to spend and invest big and I mean big on your people and allow projects time to develop. Implementing Oracle properly doesn't take a day it can take weeks if not months to set up and tune.

Costly - Hardware Costs, Support, product license costs (not all features and some of the best are extra) plus training for Oracle can be very expensive compared to other databases. So do your home work - Can you justify the cost the initial and ongoing costs?

Works with a variety of applications

Easily integrated

Can work with a SSO

Releases are not bug free, but support - if subscribed - is helpful