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Oracle is Great for In-house Development
February 22, 2019

Oracle is Great for In-house Development

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Database 12c

Oracle is our primary relational database for all in-house development. We also have SQL Server, DB2 for z, and DB2 distributed as enterprise-grade installments, but when we get to choose where to put new data, it's almost always in Oracle. It supports our primary OLTP functions, as well as BI and warehouse. The balance of speed, security, and accessibility is what sets it apart.
  • Accessibility. It's very easy to grant end-user access to the data. Oracle has done a fantastic job of providing developer-friendly tools. SQL Developer is a top-notch product, that is completely free for developers. It allows people to easily and clearly query and update data.
  • Education. There is a definite career path laid out by Oracle to develop skills to develop, administer, or use this database, and its peripheral suite of products. Aside from what Oracle itself provides, the user community does really well to encourage knowledge sharing. The user groups are fantastic.
  • Speed. From querying to load and unload utilities, Oracle can perform to your expectations. We use the diagnostic tuning pack to help aid with specific query tuning. As good as the optimizer is, it sometimes still requires a DBA to hint it in the right direction. Adding optimizer hints to SQL is a life-saver.
  • Security. I feel that this is a secure, mature product that stays abreast of the climate with frequent patches. When vulnerabilities are discovered, we are alerted promptly by Oracle.
  • Complexity. The trade-off for the excellent performance and many features is a complex structure. We have 3 different types of DBAs to support various aspects of the system. One focused on application performance and design, another on maintenance and security, and a third on alerting and patches. Each is a full-time job.
  • The push to cloud services is nauseating. It seems like a major focus for Oracle, and something our shop has little interest in.
  • I've never felt that we get our money's worth with support. This is true with almost all software, but I would expect better from Oracle.
  • RAC architecture works as promised, but adds an even greater level of complexity to your system. There are things from an administration standpoint that are not yet consolidated across RAC nodes. For example, if you are looking for a specific user session and run 3 active nodes, you have a search 3 places for it. There should be utilities to traverse all RAC nodes for you. It's 2019. I'd like to see less development for cloud technology and more in that area.
  • The standby database is the same. Works as advised, but adds complexity and extra administration.
  • We were a little late to the BI party. But, once we started using Oracle for BI and analytics, we REALLY started to get our money's worth.
  • Oracle's analytic functions are second to none. It can crunch, pivot, sum and analyze faster than any tool I've seen. Using these features saves processing and development time.
Oracle is, I believe, the most expensive, but also the most feature-rich of the group. For in-house development, it stands apart from the pack.
So great for in-house development. If you are buying applications off the shelf, you probably don't care what kind of database supports them. But to easily create, alter, and maintain tables, views, etc. nothing beats Oracle in my opinion. A small shop can find some of these features for less money with the other vendors. Licensing costs could be a limiting factor.