Re: ** latest stable oracle 10G client

Responses inline...

On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Nuno Souto <dbvision_at_iinet.net.au> wrote:

> Dan Norris wrote,on my timestamp of 8/02/2009 11:31 AM:
>
>> ask was why you'd avoid 11g R1 (it has been available for 18 months now);
>> your reply looked like you thought I meant 10g R2. In the past
>>
>
> How long a major release of Oracle has been out means absolutely
> nothing in what regards stability and is no argument to support it.
> Witness how many patch releases 11g has had in those 18 months: 7,
> and counting.

I disagree. The product was released at 11.1.0.6 18 months ago and has had one patchset since then. To me, that indicates that they vetted the beta releases well and issued several patchsets before FCS (I was part of that beta--the testing was pretty extensive IMO).

> well. I'm not sure what Oracle can offer for 11g production customer
>> numbers or percentages. I'd guess just based on my unscientific,
>> heresay-based discussions that there probably about 25% 9.2, 60% 10g R2, and
>> 10% 11g (the rest are probably older or 10g R1). I have no sources for my
>> guesstimates, just my guess. I'd love to hear everyone else's guesses!
>>
>
> At one of the last Oracle functions here, 3% were on 11g production,
> 30% on 10gr2 and the rest spread between 9 to 7, various sub-releases.
>
> Of course, installing 11g does not mean one runs production on it.
>
> The simple fact that neither Hyperion, nor Peoplesoft or JDE support
> 11g yet says a lot: they are all Oracle sub-products. SAP, same.
> And just about most of the third party applications out there.
> That says a lot about the level of confidence 11g inspires.
>

The same vendors didn't support 10g R2 for a very long time after it was available IIRC, so I don't necessarily base my trust in a release on how fast vendors like SAP and others support the release. That is, unless my application is SAP :).

 I think that most of the 11g issues that are likely to impact most
>> customers have been found and patched by now. I also expect that 11g R2 will
>> introduce some big new features. New features also usually bring along their
>> share of issues too--that's the cost of innovation as I see it.
>>
>
> Bingo. And for as long as that continues, you'll see a lot
> of the distribution I mentioned above, where the latest version
> gets less than 5% use because everyone knows the blessed things
> are as buggy as they can get and Oracle doesn't give a hoot
> about releasing a stable version.

Maybe you'll think I've been drinking too much of the kool aid, but I have met some very conscientious Oracle developers and product managers that truly want to make the product solid before it heads out the door. I think it's a pretty large generalization to say that "Oracle doesn't give a hoot..." I'm sure some decisions are made to ship it without fixing certain issues (no doubt to be fixed "later") in the interest of meeting a release schedule. After all, anyone that has been involved with any product, especially software, knows that you'll never release a perfect product.

> Heck: you need 10.2.0.3 to get stable support for ASSM which has
> been out since 8i and even then you MUST still install a patch,
> and you want folks to merrily upgrade to 11g?
> Yeah, right: like, it's gonna happen...

If it's fixed in 10.2.0.3, then it would have had plenty of time to be included in 11g. Both sides of this issue have technical merit. However, I think we've all heard and some of us have experienced, that getting a new bug addressed on the latest release is usually faster response than a bug fix on a terminal or older release (backports excluded).

 If I were deploying a system today, I'd absolutely use 11g R1. But I
> suspect that's just me...not everyone would agree.
>

I think so...
>

I'm sure you're not alone!

However, I wonder when you and others that share your view would consider it "safe" or at least tolerable to consider using 11g as their version of choice. Of course, Oracle will try to motivate customers by desupporting older releases or, if not officially desupporting, at least making it more difficult to get acceptable support for them. Putting that aside, what are the criteria (perhaps from a technical perspective) that will make 11g "okay"? After all, I imagine that we'll all eventually move on to 11g someday. I'm just trying to figure out when 11g will no longer be considered "new".

If you think I'm being reckless by advising customers to use 11g, help me understand how 10g R2 is better for them. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that they test their brand new, custom application on both releases without encountering any oops in the DB and performance is comparable. Should they still avoid 11g?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Dan

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