Re: Is Oracle deliberately difficult?

Brian Peasland wrote:

> I constantly hear (and see in these newsgroups) where individuals
> complain about how difficult Oracle is to use. And it never fails to
> hear an ex-SQL Server guy complain about how difficult Oracle is to
> administer. Every time I've heard of these complaints, it always boils
> down to the same thing...a lack of understanding or education on Oracle
> concepts. If these people take the time to learn Oracle concepts, then
> it wouldn't seem so difficult to them. Oracle is complex, but not that
> difficult. It's the complexity that gives Oracle its power.
>
> Just my 3.14159265 cents worth,
> Brian

I've heard this before-people who find Oracle difficult simply lack sufficient training in it. So how much training is enough? My office has invested over $60,000 in training two of us, exclusive of travel & per diem expenses which (for Alaska) typically double that. Both of us agree that we still find Oracle extremely difficult to use, even after a year of using it. (That's also exclusive of the cost of purchasing Oracle + support, upgrading servers & clients, etc.)

I'm afraid that I agree with both your statement and the original statement. Powerful applications are typically complex, and Oracle is no exception. It's problem is that it's gone to the point that you need at least one dedicated, full-time Oracle employee and the typical business can't afford that. Basically, Oracle is *too* powerful (i.e. too complex) to be manageable except in very large organizations. Just my opinion. We only have 40 users. My opinion, in retrospect, is that we are too small and shouldn't have gone with Oracle. If you include initial purchase, training, travel, server & client upgrades, etc. then we've invested over $250,000 in changing from a Wang mini-computer database to Oracle, although part of that, probably $50,000 at least, would have been spent anyway as normal Windows upgrades, but Oracle drove the timing. There are 4 of us who manage a mix of COBOL, VB, and Oracle applications and support 40 Windows users (and Office applications) on a Netware LAN. Maybe if Windows didn't demand so much support we could devote more time to Oracle, but that's simply trying to decide which of two 'bullies' is more to blame for our problems. Received on Fri Sep 01 2000 - 11:31:01 CDT