Re: About restore from 11g

From: Powell, Mark <mark.powell2_at_dxc.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:56:26 +0000
Message-ID: <CS1PR84MB01838136E0BEC9AAE72E1F9FCC100_at_CS1PR84MB0183.NAMPRD84.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>



The reason to keep your support contract on obsolete and no longer supported versions of Oracle is that Oracle support will still provide you assistance as long as you have a contract. So if you hit an issue you can open an SR and if support can identify a known issue that has a patch you get the patch or workaround from the support article. And as long as you maintain your support contract you qualify to upgrade when management finally determines that "we are not going to scrap this system so what do we need to keep it running" and you jump from say version 8.1 to 11.2.

Mark Powell
Database Administration
(313) 592-5148



From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> on behalf of Mladen Gogala <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2017 12:37:28 AM To: tim.evdbt_at_gmail.com; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: Re: About restore from 11g

Hi Tim,
We're not talking about licensing, we're talking about support charges. And they cannot charge for something they don't provide: support for 11.2.0.3 instance. It is possible to cancel support contract and no longer pay for support. The CSI# gets invalid and there is no support for the installed software. No more bug fixes or technical support requests. The license is still valid. However, with 11.2.0.3 instance, it is no longer possible to get support without a special contract. So why should the 11.2.0.3 customer pay for support, especially if there is no intention to upgrade to a supported version? You are getting all worked up about a wrong thing: support is not the same as license. I can buy an Oracle license, without support. Annual support cost is typically 22% of the license cost. Your statement is valid for Oracle license, but not for support. License cost is usually negotiated based on capacity, although there are exceptions. Support cost is ALWAYS negotiated as a percentage of the licensing cost, no exceptions. It is also possible to decrease the capacity use of Oracle and say that the company will no longer use Oracle on X CPU cores but will use it on Y CPU cores, where X > Y. That, as a matter of fact, happens quite frequently, with companies moving data warehouse type databases to SQL Server or SAP Hana. It usually causes a hostile license audit by Oracle Corp. but the frequency of those is dropping rapidly, as the competition increases. Those hostile audits did not make many friends to Oracle Corp. and the victims are quite likely to switch to another RDBMS. Somebody at Oracle Corp. has finally seen the light and they are no longer doing those audits with the same vigour and regularity, as the time of general availability of SQL Server 2016 on Linux is drawing nearer. And a little birdie told me that AWS support will be available right from the start. There is also a bad news on the application front:

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-SAP-generally-selected-over-Oracle-in-ERP

Do you know that SAP also works on SQL Server? Quite frankly, I will buy you a meal in New York City, in the restaurant of your choice (up to $150 per person, to keep it within reason) if the prices of Oracle do not come down significantly in the next 2-3 years, with much more free stuff, like partitioning and advanced compression being included free of charge. You can remind me of this promise on 05/01/2020. Alternatively, I come to Denver at least once per year, the same offer applies.

Regards

On 04/26/2017 10:05 PM, Tim Gorman wrote:
> Oracle doesn't charge for what is actually used; they charge for how
> much capacity is available.
>
> ...just the messenger here...
>
>
>
> On 4/26/17 19:30, Mladen Gogala wrote:
>> On 04/26/2017 08:39 PM, Tim Gorman wrote:
>>> Err, I don't think that is how support works... :)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Hmmm, I doubt that they can charge you for support of an unsupported
>> version. Charging for service that is not provided is allegedly
>> illegal, so I've been told. And the statement that the version
>> 11.2.0.3 is unsupported means that Oracle Corp. will not provide
>> support for it. Consequently, they cannot charge for support, for
>> 11.2.0.3 instance.
>>
>

--
Mladen Gogala
Oracle DBA
Tel: (347) 321-1217

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l



--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
Received on Thu Apr 27 2017 - 14:56:26 CEST

Original text of this message