I gotta join this club. Started my IT career in '95 - did my first oracle install in 2005 - it's been the most inscrutable software i've ever encountered.
I so regret getting it. In a windows environment i would challenge anyone to give a good reason to run Oracle instead of MS Sqlserver. I used to love bashing Microsoft, i never thought i'd actually be dreaming of the day when i could 'upgrade' to the Micorsoft offering.
Oracle is a windows sysadmin's nightmare. I've had 3 periods of downtime each of over a week in the last 2 years. Has been the most stress i've ever encountered in my job. The best bit was that each time it turned out to be a fix taking less than 1hour. Not only do i feel dumb, exasperated, p1ssed off but i run into this Attitude everywhere i look for Oracle information. I call it the Oracle attitude and it goes like this: 'You shouldn't need to ask any questions cos all the answers are in the book, you lazy idiot, why can't you take a year off and read all the manuals and then you'll be able to use our beloved database. All Hail The Oracle!' (At this point you're supposed to get out your 3foot thick oracle manual and kiss it).
i'd like to wipe my 4rse with the oracle documentation. i used to write manuals and readme's - in fact i still do sometimes. i've never seen so many circular references in official documentation before, or spent so much time searching for HOW to do something (which i think at least should be relatively simple). I am looking at it from a sysadmin point of view. I'll probably never create a database from scratch in my life. I look after networks, maintain hardware, sort out routing, that kind of thing. Right now i spend 2 hours a day over looking my network then i sit down with the Oracle O'Reilly take a deep breathe and read that for the rest of the day. Cos i've given up on Oracle support, on Oracle documentation and the courses are for someone who's dedicated to oracle and nothing else - i did the first course but it was like a crammer course, you need to go away and go over all the notes again before it sinks in.
Last issue i had about 2 weeks ago, i escalated it with Oracle support after about a week - i couldn't connect to one of my databases, i was sure i'd done something silly and messed up the config - and if i've learned one thing its that oracle is very very fussy and the config has to be just right (which is why i backed up all my config b4 changing anything). Anyway after a week and a half and talking to half a dozen guys and running tons of diagnostics which didn't apply to my trivial situation, i gave up and called a contractor.
He fixed it over the phone in 50 minutes. (half an hour of that call was talking about money). Oh, i should say to be fair that i had already sent him my old listener.ora file and my current one. Cut and pasted 4 lines from the old to the new and it all worked. The relief to be able to see my database again was amazing. The worst thing was i KNEW it was something to do with my listener.ora file, i told oracle support that, i even sent them the old and the new. (One of their guys advised me to drop all my tables and start again rebuilding the database). The other 2 down times were equally trivial - (although having downtime was definitely not trivial). So i felt truly dumb, the whole office was stressful cos one of the main servers was down, and that contractor made in less than 1hour half of my weekly wage.
I think it has been worst mistake of my IT career when i listened to the salesman tell me that between oracle and sqlserver the maintenance overhead was about the same but oracle was more advanced and had more features and i believed him! So i'm suffering for that naive mistake. It has literally doubled my workload, i've never encountered such shocking support, (i have worked in support off and on many times, 1st line, 2nd line and 3rd line), and i don't think we gain any advantage as a company by having this app.
I'm sure that oracle is brilliant - if you're ebay or amazon, but not otherwise. And don't believe the marketing hype - it is totally at odds with the support culture.
It will probably take me a while to migrate all my databases and i'm sure it won't be easy but this database is a waste of time for a guy like me. And once i get approval i'm off out of the land of Oracle :-)
Just one example of what i consider a typical waste of time on planet Oracle: You install on windows2003 server and you have to manually create environmental variables - if you want to be able to connect that is - and it doesn't say this in the windows2003 install guide? How could they miss out something so simple yet so critical? Stuff like this happens time and time again - even on the course the teacher was telling us things which she just happened to know which weren't documented.
It's not stupid to ask someone how to do something rather than read a manual for 4 hours. Nor is it necessarily a sign of intelligence if you know something obscure that no-one else knows because it is so hard to find out.
What i rate as intelligent is the ability to design something that someone else can learn and use relatively quickly, and then in subsequent versions to make it yet more intuitive and logical to use (tho i must admit 10g Enterprise Manager is a great improvement on the 9i one). I can't rate intelligence as the ability to pour scorn on all criticism and tell them to go away and read the book. I'm going to go away and install something else.
I admit i don't know the intricacies of databases, i'm sysadmin, but i'm not going to be intimidated by the Oracle Attitude anymore, maybe it is the greatest database in the world but who cares? Wasn't Betamax technically better than VHS? When i started in IT we used to replace Netware servers with NT4 boxes. Technically netware was definitely better - quicker, less restarts, needed less resources but who won that battle?
Laugh as much as you want at MS Sqlserver oracle gurus - it's not just about being technically the best. What about usability? learnability? Interoperability with your O/S? All convoluted obscure solutions with high learning curves and requiring high maintenance will always be replaced - eventually.
Well I didn't mean to write so long - guess i have 2 years of frustration to get out!