Metalink and availability

Today Metalink says:

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Each and every minor change or enhancement to Metalink that I can recall since it was first introduced in 1998 or so has resulted in massive loss of service. Most notable was "2.0" which tipped over completely on its first day and didn't work right for months. At least now you see error messages that say something instead of unfiltered PL/SQL exceptions.

I guess they don't consider their customers' time and stability to be important enough to devote resources to the service sufficient to keep it working through enhancements. Unfortunately, the license language only promises "generally accepted industry standard" quality service. Alas, since people have been conditioned to accept a low standard of quality on software engineering, Oracle can plausibly argue that Metalink, despite being unusable, meets this standard.

Jeremiah Wilton
ORA-600 Consulting
http://www.ora-600.net

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