A "Newbie's" view of Oracle
I'm about a month into Oracle, and I feel somewhat obligated to
document some of my frustrations and opinions on various issues. I
have no intention of slamming the company or its products, but at the
same time, I can't help but be appalled at how unnecessarily difficult
it is to go from zero-to-twenty. I want to make note of these things
for several reasons:
- I don't want to forget how much a pain this process has been,
and don't want to turn into another 'DBA clone', who, once he's gone
through the trial by fire of learning Oracle, maintains that it's
child's play, and starts accepting what I consider to be unacceptable
quality control as status quo.
- My sincere hope is that some of these criticisms are taken to
heart by the appropriate people; by expressing my opinions in a public
forum, I feel I have a better chance of attaining this goal (as well
as give others the opportunity to debate the issue).
Suffice to say, everything in this message is MY OPINION. Take it
with a grain of salt.
Let me preface this diatribe by saying where I'm coming from. I'm an
accomplished programmer in various languages and platforms. My work
has won numerous honors and awards, including "Editor's Choice" in PC
Magazine. However, I'm a complete newbie (or at least I was a few
months ago) at SQL and Oracle. I'm typically able to get up to speed
on new systems very quickly. This was not the case with Oracle, and
I'm well aware I've made a lot of brainless mistakes; incorrect
assumptions, and have often been guilty of lacking patience &
dilligence, however I don't believe I could possibly be near the low
end (in terms of competence & attention span) of those who
might be preparing to enter the Oracle world.
First and foremost, I have to admit that most of Oracle's products are
very well designed. The performance and stability seems to be way
above average, which IMO probably has the most to do with Oracle's
success. However, on the other side, I'm appalled at how
unnecessarily convoluted the support and education process is. I
have yet to take any Oracle classes, but I don't feel that this should
be a prerequisite to being able to be productive with the world's most
popular database system. If I'm wrong, then I feel this is a weakness
in the company's marketing strategy.
OTOH, I'm quickly starting to speculate that Oracle may end up making
more money from support-related services than they do from selling
products. If this is the case, then perhaps all of these faux pas are
actually, carefully orchestrated in order to stimulate revenue. I
can't say I'm very thrilled with this realization, but there are
so many glaring ommissions and bad documentation, that it must be the
case, and I think it's pretty sad.
Nonetheless, I'll share some examples of my gripes and solicit
comments:
- Why is the majority of Oracle's documentation exclusively on CD-ROM?
Am I the only person who finds this incredibly annoying? I can
understand that, if for example, the company can't afford to print so
many manuals (yea, that must be it), or maybe it's because they want
to keep their docs so timely that electronic publishing is the best
way of providing support? I don't think so considering I ordered
software last month, and the documentation CD-ROM they
sent me was almost a year old!
- Let's confuse them some more dept: I ordered the NT version of the
Oracle server - ok, it installed nicely (and btw, one really nice
thing I must say is that the OraInst program is well done), however in
the docs there are various references to programs like SVRMGR.EXE,
SQLDBA, SQL*Loader, etc. Of course if you look for these programs or
type the filename at the command prompt as the docs suggest,
they don't seem to be there, yet OraInst says they're installed. Ok,
so where are they? Well after a rather arduous process, I
discovered that many of these programs have been arbitrarily renamed
to files like: SVRMGR23.EXE and SQLLDR73.EXE. Very nice. What
bonehead came up with this idea? These programs typically display
their version numbers upon execution. Why would you need to change
the filename with every release? Does Oracle drug test their product
managers? They should.
A classic example of Oracle's obvious inability to properly document
their systems can be found in one of their most popular and recent
publications, "Oracle, The Complete Reference" - how ironic!
- In general, this publication is a good representative of Oracle
publications, that is, it's unnecessarily convoluted, very short on
useful examples, and often includes references to things which aren't
explained nearby (if at all). While containing lots of useful
information, the manner in which the book is organized
is so bad that it's laughable, and pretty sad at the same time. As
expected, the first section of almost every Oracle publication starts
with tons of fluffy propoganda on how wonderful and powerful Oracle
is. *yawn*
The first half of the book moves like a tutorial and introduction to
Oracle, unfortunately the logic of how information is presented leaves
a LOT to be desired.
For example, I don't understand why the tutorial on creating tables is
in Chapter SIXTEEN, following chapters such as, "Some Complex
Possibilities", and "Advanced Use of Functions and Variables." You
can be quite confident that all your possibilities will be complex
when you haven't yet figured out how to create a table! Once again,
I want to know what kinds of mushrooms the technical writers are
putting on their pizzas!
- Try finding a list of error codes and their meetings in this
"reference" - I guess that's perhaps too esoteric a subject to
include? How many other language references
do you think leave out error codes and explanations?
- Look up something like the function TO_CHAR() in the reference,
which requires a 'format' string. Notice that there is no associated
information on the usage of the format string. If someone wants to
look up the TO_CHAR() function, what do you think they're going to be
interested in finding out 99% of the time? That's right, the legend
of the format string. Is it there? No. Is there any indication
of where this information can be found? Not really. However, if
you're dilligent you can look at the fourth entry in the "See Also:"
reference, skip back 800+ pages to "Chapter 7", skim through, and you
find some of the info. If this book was the basis of a scavenger
hunt, it would be quite entertaining and fun.
The above is representative of most of this "reference." Information
is incomplete and unorganized all over the place.
- This is one of my favorites: In the heading for the language
reference, there's a section entitled "Products" which apparently is
supposed to give you an indication of which products support the
associated statement. Unfortunately, in many of the listings, the
word, "All" is listed. Is that ridiculous or what? This essentially
guarantees that the book will likely be obsolete before it's even off
the press - or is this yet another example of Oracle's "brilliant"
marketing tactics?
- Most obnoxious reference: "Because it isn't cloaked in arcane
language that only systems professionals can comprehend, ORACLE
fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship between business
and systems people. Anybody can understand it. Anybody can use it."
Oh yea!!! Perhaps this is true, IF you take out any reference
to "ORACLE" and replace it with "SQL", and you out-source the
technical writing to people who HAVEN'T had umpteen million years of
experience with Oracle and assume everyone else reading has as well.
- To be fair, I should also point out that the book "Oracle Databases
on the Web", published by Corols Group Books, is almost as bad. This
book spends way too much time on mundane things such as Oracle's lame
encapsulation of html packages, and virtually no information on more
important packages such as UTL_FILE - I guess they figure file i/o is
not important in a web database? In fact, the only reference in
this books index to "file" is as in "file transfer protocol" - good
grief - this book isn't on Oracle - it's an Internet tutorial! The
index has references to "Gallium Arsenide" but not
"File I/O". What is with these Oracle people? Are they all nuts??
Oracle manages to take a rather easy language and cloak it in some of
the worst documentation produced on the planet. This obviously
explains why DBAs command such high salaries; who has the patience to
dance through megabytes of online manuals, thousands of pages of
printed books, hours of classes, and hours of tech support to build a
simple database? One thing's for sure, DBAs obviously have an
unparalleled level of tolerance and patience - a very noble quality.
In closing, I find it a shame that such good products are so darn
difficult to learn when they don't need to be. It's true, once you
get up to speed with Oracle, it becomes much easier - but there is no
excuse for the horrible, horrible, horrible documentation!!!!
Received on Mon Jul 07 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT
