"Oracle Unbreakable"
-
-
There are Oracle fans ? How is this possible ? Let them talk to me, I'll set them straight. Christian No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002 Hey, at least Logo had, at it's inception, a mechanical turtle. VB has always lacked even that... - Shog9 04-09-2002 During last 10 years, with invention of VB and similar programming environments, every ill-educated moron became able to develop software. - Alex E. - 12-Sept-2002
What's so horribly wrong with Oracle? I haven't used any Oracle tool professionally, so I don't really know anything about it. I'm developing for Sybase ASA/ASE and MS SQL 2000 right now, and Oracle in the long run. Is there something I should know and prepare myself for? :) -- Master, I'm so glad to feel your presence. But you don't seem to share my impatience. I relied upon you to break the silence. I cannot understand your reluctance. Master, I feel so warm and I'm so happy, oh master. Give me some more of the warm little beasts I'm so fond of.
-
What's so horribly wrong with Oracle? I haven't used any Oracle tool professionally, so I don't really know anything about it. I'm developing for Sybase ASA/ASE and MS SQL 2000 right now, and Oracle in the long run. Is there something I should know and prepare myself for? :) -- Master, I'm so glad to feel your presence. But you don't seem to share my impatience. I relied upon you to break the silence. I cannot understand your reluctance. Master, I feel so warm and I'm so happy, oh master. Give me some more of the warm little beasts I'm so fond of.
-
What's so horribly wrong with Oracle? I haven't used any Oracle tool professionally, so I don't really know anything about it. I'm developing for Sybase ASA/ASE and MS SQL 2000 right now, and Oracle in the long run. Is there something I should know and prepare myself for? :) -- Master, I'm so glad to feel your presence. But you don't seem to share my impatience. I relied upon you to break the silence. I cannot understand your reluctance. Master, I feel so warm and I'm so happy, oh master. Give me some more of the warm little beasts I'm so fond of.
It's also know as the consultant's and DBA's database of choice. They love it!!! Why? Because it requires constant attention and tuning. Compared to SQL Server 2000, which is more self tuning and self maintaining, every detail must be dealt with in Oracle. The Java tools are slow, the java installers are absolutely terrible, and for the price, you would expect 10x what you actually get. But that initial cost of the licencse is just a fraction of what it actually costs to run. Performance can easily be matched by SQL Server, in many cases exceeded. It's all about the hardware and disk arrays. If you do an SQL server on fibre channel 64bit PCI busses and intelligentlly spread indexes, logs, data across multiple arrays, there is nothing Oracle can do that SQL Server cant. My background is Sun Oracle, but I would not put in any new oracle sun - it's not worth it. The cost/perfomance of Intel/SQLserver2000 is amazing. The only reason you don't see it in more large installs, is becuase the consultants that traditionally make their money in that space will lose their jobs. Would you recommend it if you made your bread and butter with Sun/Oracle. It is rare that tech decisions are made on good business cases or technical merits - it more about what joe blow is good at. Ive even see architechs lie to get what they want. Cheers
-
What's so horribly wrong with Oracle? I haven't used any Oracle tool professionally, so I don't really know anything about it. I'm developing for Sybase ASA/ASE and MS SQL 2000 right now, and Oracle in the long run. Is there something I should know and prepare myself for? :) -- Master, I'm so glad to feel your presence. But you don't seem to share my impatience. I relied upon you to break the silence. I cannot understand your reluctance. Master, I feel so warm and I'm so happy, oh master. Give me some more of the warm little beasts I'm so fond of.
There are two groups of problems. The first, which everyone one around here complained about, simply come down to Oracle being different to SQL Server, which everyone knew how to use. That's not a big deal, it's just a case of learning how to use a different system. The real problem is the client tools, and the patches, etc. Oracle distribute using their own installer, and every patch you download is bloated by the fact that it comes with the installer. Also, once you download a patch which has a newer version of the installer, everything installed with the older version will not be uninstallable. Finally, the client tools, the GUI you use to administer the database, check on it's condition, search it, etc., is increedibly fragile. It broke when I applied Oracle patches, when I installed a newer MDAC and when I installed a new ODBC driver as the old one leaked memory. In each instance getting it to work again meant spending a day manually deleting all traces of Oracle and reinstalling, and in each case it's a trade off - do I need the patch more, or Oracle tools ? As a result of a nasty memory leak fixed by MDAC, I cannot run the client tools anymore on my machine. Oracle recommends setting up a machine solely to run client tools so they don't get broken, which is a bit like saying 'buy a new computer to run our app because we're too stupid to write it properly'. The client tools are also written in Java and the GUI is beyond awful. Imagine pulling up a table view, and if you move the scroll bar too quickly, the table is corrupted and you need to close it and start again. If you right click on a tree item ( something you need to do often ), it can take 2 minutes for the menu to come up, and if you've moved to another app in the meantime, the menu comes up over the top of that app and screws everything up. They would not be where they are if their DB did not work, but it seems the good stuff is all what the client sees, not what the developer needs to fight with to make it work. Christian No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002 Hey, at least Logo had, at it's inception, a mechanical turtle. VB has always lacked even that... - Shog9 04-09-2002 During last 10 years, with invention of VB and similar programming environments, every ill-educated moron became able to develop software. - Alex E. - 12-Sept-2002
-
You know.. just when I thought my day could not get worse... I happen to be an Oracle DBA and I found the whole thread tiresome and not just a litle bit insulting. It's like walking up and peeing on my shoes here guys. I thought this kinda stuff was supposed to go to Soapbox?? First off, I'm a DBA, I've been in charge of Oracle systems for about 6 years now. I learned on it and then adapted to SQLServer, Sybase, UDB/DB2, and MySQL. I've run warehouse systems, websites, and billion dollar+ financial systems on my databases. I've been in charge of systems where the difference of 5milliseconds in query response time was the difference between an acceptable running system or not. I'm pretty good at what I do and I enjoy it. In fact I gave up writing C++, MFC and VB mostly to devote myself to SQL and being a DBA fulltime. I think I can safely say that I'm qualified to at least add my two sense worth. So, here I go.... 1) The Oracle pricing structure sucks, has always sucked, and will probably always suck. However, this can safely be said of SQLServer Enterprise and most other RDBMS systems. Oracle just happens to be the most expensive. For that priviledge they will either have to turn out a product that is equal to the cost or watch their market share dwindle. Laws of economics folks. IF you want to hate em because their slice of the pie happens to be bigger (and I'm not positive it is. I haven't looked at marketshare's lately) than Microsoft's or IBM's for a particular segment, go ahead. But if you ask me that's a pretty silly way to talk yourself out of alot of potential jobs. 2) Yes, The current java based installation program is bad. Yes, I prefer the original Character mode for Unix or Windows-based that they used to have. However, the installer is not the piece of crap you paint it to be. I've worked with this thing for 3+ years now. It's not alot different from installshield in operation at its core and it's development documentation is available if you want to modify or develop your own packages. About two weeks with some of that documentation and I figured out it behaves pretty much liek the original Character/Windows installers. Keys to ths Java installer 1) Above all else, Install the installer FIRST and separately. Use the latest version you have. This can be tyically be obtained form the Oracle Web site. 2) Know your products and READ the documentation. Judging from Christians decription he most likely was talking about installing the Oracle Enterprise management tools which are th
-
You know.. just when I thought my day could not get worse... I happen to be an Oracle DBA and I found the whole thread tiresome and not just a litle bit insulting. It's like walking up and peeing on my shoes here guys. I thought this kinda stuff was supposed to go to Soapbox?? First off, I'm a DBA, I've been in charge of Oracle systems for about 6 years now. I learned on it and then adapted to SQLServer, Sybase, UDB/DB2, and MySQL. I've run warehouse systems, websites, and billion dollar+ financial systems on my databases. I've been in charge of systems where the difference of 5milliseconds in query response time was the difference between an acceptable running system or not. I'm pretty good at what I do and I enjoy it. In fact I gave up writing C++, MFC and VB mostly to devote myself to SQL and being a DBA fulltime. I think I can safely say that I'm qualified to at least add my two sense worth. So, here I go.... 1) The Oracle pricing structure sucks, has always sucked, and will probably always suck. However, this can safely be said of SQLServer Enterprise and most other RDBMS systems. Oracle just happens to be the most expensive. For that priviledge they will either have to turn out a product that is equal to the cost or watch their market share dwindle. Laws of economics folks. IF you want to hate em because their slice of the pie happens to be bigger (and I'm not positive it is. I haven't looked at marketshare's lately) than Microsoft's or IBM's for a particular segment, go ahead. But if you ask me that's a pretty silly way to talk yourself out of alot of potential jobs. 2) Yes, The current java based installation program is bad. Yes, I prefer the original Character mode for Unix or Windows-based that they used to have. However, the installer is not the piece of crap you paint it to be. I've worked with this thing for 3+ years now. It's not alot different from installshield in operation at its core and it's development documentation is available if you want to modify or develop your own packages. About two weeks with some of that documentation and I figured out it behaves pretty much liek the original Character/Windows installers. Keys to ths Java installer 1) Above all else, Install the installer FIRST and separately. Use the latest version you have. This can be tyically be obtained form the Oracle Web site. 2) Know your products and READ the documentation. Judging from Christians decription he most likely was talking about installing the Oracle Enterprise management tools which are th
Mark Conger wrote: I listen day in and day out to people bitch about Oracle, bitch about Sql Server 99% of them being programmers. And that 99% can't write an efficient complex query to save their life Saaaay, that sounds like a great topic for an article... (hint, hint)
Shog9 ------
Living in Australia, it's the next best thing to being in the Middle East - Taka Muraoka, Clickety..., 10/30/02
-
You know.. just when I thought my day could not get worse... I happen to be an Oracle DBA and I found the whole thread tiresome and not just a litle bit insulting. It's like walking up and peeing on my shoes here guys. I thought this kinda stuff was supposed to go to Soapbox?? First off, I'm a DBA, I've been in charge of Oracle systems for about 6 years now. I learned on it and then adapted to SQLServer, Sybase, UDB/DB2, and MySQL. I've run warehouse systems, websites, and billion dollar+ financial systems on my databases. I've been in charge of systems where the difference of 5milliseconds in query response time was the difference between an acceptable running system or not. I'm pretty good at what I do and I enjoy it. In fact I gave up writing C++, MFC and VB mostly to devote myself to SQL and being a DBA fulltime. I think I can safely say that I'm qualified to at least add my two sense worth. So, here I go.... 1) The Oracle pricing structure sucks, has always sucked, and will probably always suck. However, this can safely be said of SQLServer Enterprise and most other RDBMS systems. Oracle just happens to be the most expensive. For that priviledge they will either have to turn out a product that is equal to the cost or watch their market share dwindle. Laws of economics folks. IF you want to hate em because their slice of the pie happens to be bigger (and I'm not positive it is. I haven't looked at marketshare's lately) than Microsoft's or IBM's for a particular segment, go ahead. But if you ask me that's a pretty silly way to talk yourself out of alot of potential jobs. 2) Yes, The current java based installation program is bad. Yes, I prefer the original Character mode for Unix or Windows-based that they used to have. However, the installer is not the piece of crap you paint it to be. I've worked with this thing for 3+ years now. It's not alot different from installshield in operation at its core and it's development documentation is available if you want to modify or develop your own packages. About two weeks with some of that documentation and I figured out it behaves pretty much liek the original Character/Windows installers. Keys to ths Java installer 1) Above all else, Install the installer FIRST and separately. Use the latest version you have. This can be tyically be obtained form the Oracle Web site. 2) Know your products and READ the documentation. Judging from Christians decription he most likely was talking about installing the Oracle Enterprise management tools which are th
Good post! Got to respect that! I will say that having used and DBA'ed Informix for several years - I know where you are coming from. I am still very irritated that I have to hint everything in Oracle to get simple stuff to run effectively, and a recent conversion to 9i left a very bad taste in my mouth. It was buggy to the core, and oh the patches...the performance is not very good either - not for the price and the admin overhead. One thing I love about SQL Server is it's optimizer works very well - wont make up for bad sql - but queries that are written properly perform extremely well. Same scenario on Oracle gets sent to the DBAs to figure out why it runs in 15 minutes. After tuning, the DBAs can get queries down to 5-10 secs. There should not be such a wide discrepancy between performance - most of the time all they do is hinting. Informix did optimization very well, SQL Server does it, why can't oracle? This is where the DBA/Consultant friendly comment comes from, and actually it's a quote I took from one of my DBAs who is a consultant. No offense intended by my post, but Oracle really does need to can that 'Unbreakable' marketing pitch - it's a joke. Cheers;)
-
Oracle is the biggest crock of shit I've ever had the pleasure to use. For an application (because deep down thats all it is) that has been under constant development for well over 10 years, what amazes me is how buggy ever new release is. The support for help/patches is crap. The oracle client components look like they have been developed by a VB programmer. SQL + well just think what could be done with this simple command line window (syntax color, clipview etc.) And why or why have'nt oracle done something about the front end - just look at SQL Server is excellent for a non DB programmer to use. Oracle have been fleecing people for far to long, come everybody is the emporers new clothes. "VB the polished turd of software languages"
-
There are two groups of problems. The first, which everyone one around here complained about, simply come down to Oracle being different to SQL Server, which everyone knew how to use. That's not a big deal, it's just a case of learning how to use a different system. The real problem is the client tools, and the patches, etc. Oracle distribute using their own installer, and every patch you download is bloated by the fact that it comes with the installer. Also, once you download a patch which has a newer version of the installer, everything installed with the older version will not be uninstallable. Finally, the client tools, the GUI you use to administer the database, check on it's condition, search it, etc., is increedibly fragile. It broke when I applied Oracle patches, when I installed a newer MDAC and when I installed a new ODBC driver as the old one leaked memory. In each instance getting it to work again meant spending a day manually deleting all traces of Oracle and reinstalling, and in each case it's a trade off - do I need the patch more, or Oracle tools ? As a result of a nasty memory leak fixed by MDAC, I cannot run the client tools anymore on my machine. Oracle recommends setting up a machine solely to run client tools so they don't get broken, which is a bit like saying 'buy a new computer to run our app because we're too stupid to write it properly'. The client tools are also written in Java and the GUI is beyond awful. Imagine pulling up a table view, and if you move the scroll bar too quickly, the table is corrupted and you need to close it and start again. If you right click on a tree item ( something you need to do often ), it can take 2 minutes for the menu to come up, and if you've moved to another app in the meantime, the menu comes up over the top of that app and screws everything up. They would not be where they are if their DB did not work, but it seems the good stuff is all what the client sees, not what the developer needs to fight with to make it work. Christian No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002 Hey, at least Logo had, at it's inception, a mechanical turtle. VB has always lacked even that... - Shog9 04-09-2002 During last 10 years, with invention of VB and similar programming environments, every ill-educated moron became able to develop software. - Alex E. - 12-Sept-2002
Christian Graus wrote: The client tools are also written in Java and the GUI is beyond awful When I moved from Oracle 7 to 8, I spent months weeping and crying. While the client tools in 7 may have been half-assed attempts at writing Win32 apps, they were somewhat usable. The garbage they ship now is just that, garbage. Chris Meech
-
You know.. just when I thought my day could not get worse... I happen to be an Oracle DBA and I found the whole thread tiresome and not just a litle bit insulting. It's like walking up and peeing on my shoes here guys. I thought this kinda stuff was supposed to go to Soapbox?? First off, I'm a DBA, I've been in charge of Oracle systems for about 6 years now. I learned on it and then adapted to SQLServer, Sybase, UDB/DB2, and MySQL. I've run warehouse systems, websites, and billion dollar+ financial systems on my databases. I've been in charge of systems where the difference of 5milliseconds in query response time was the difference between an acceptable running system or not. I'm pretty good at what I do and I enjoy it. In fact I gave up writing C++, MFC and VB mostly to devote myself to SQL and being a DBA fulltime. I think I can safely say that I'm qualified to at least add my two sense worth. So, here I go.... 1) The Oracle pricing structure sucks, has always sucked, and will probably always suck. However, this can safely be said of SQLServer Enterprise and most other RDBMS systems. Oracle just happens to be the most expensive. For that priviledge they will either have to turn out a product that is equal to the cost or watch their market share dwindle. Laws of economics folks. IF you want to hate em because their slice of the pie happens to be bigger (and I'm not positive it is. I haven't looked at marketshare's lately) than Microsoft's or IBM's for a particular segment, go ahead. But if you ask me that's a pretty silly way to talk yourself out of alot of potential jobs. 2) Yes, The current java based installation program is bad. Yes, I prefer the original Character mode for Unix or Windows-based that they used to have. However, the installer is not the piece of crap you paint it to be. I've worked with this thing for 3+ years now. It's not alot different from installshield in operation at its core and it's development documentation is available if you want to modify or develop your own packages. About two weeks with some of that documentation and I figured out it behaves pretty much liek the original Character/Windows installers. Keys to ths Java installer 1) Above all else, Install the installer FIRST and separately. Use the latest version you have. This can be tyically be obtained form the Oracle Web site. 2) Know your products and READ the documentation. Judging from Christians decription he most likely was talking about installing the Oracle Enterprise management tools which are th
Mark Conger wrote: And that 99% can't write an efficient complex query to save their life. Most of them just select a bunch of stuff into a cursor or a set of variables. They don't see the database as part of their application, don't understand the power that lies there, don't know that tuning their code doens't just mean tuning their VB or C# stuff. It's tuning your SQL, using indexes, hints, the optimizers. When was the last time you profiled the SQL statements in your applciations vs your datamodel? I mean run an explain PLan through several itterations to make sure proper indexes are being used and that you are getting the best you can out of the system? 99% of the programmers I know don't. As I hope I'm in the 1%, can I just point out that developing for DB independence isn't helped by the fact that there are things that are done differently and in some cases, inappropriately by some vendors. In SQL Server, you can have DDL in a transaction, in ORACLE you can't. Which is a shame if you want to rollback a table creation because you couldn't insert metadata into another table... Oh, and why can't the ORACLE OLE DB driver return simple numeric types like INT instead of NUMERIC types. I know an INT is NUMERIC... Still, could be worse, I might be having to work with Access... Steve S [This signature space available for rent]