Re: Oracle Past and Present...

On 22 Aug 2001 06:29:57 -0700, mark.powell_at_eds.com (Mark D Powell) wrote:

>release. We as DBA's and developers are just going to have to spend
>more time learning the product in order to support applications that
>use Oracle effectively. It will mean a lot of work for us just to be
>able to do our jobs properly.

Yup. Personally, it's wonderful! Before, no way I'd have a chance of loading OLAP to play with the analytical stuff. With 8i, it's there for me to enjoy. Nifty and been used often. Roll on the extras, I say.

But you're right, particularly since 8i the volume of changes is huge. One of the reasons I now totally disagree with the OCP certificate as is. No way a DBA or developer in their daily workload will have a chance in hell of ever needing all that stuff. Very few sites use all the possible options. There's no need for a "all-knowing" certificate when 50% of it is never gonna be used anyway.

ORA should look at splitting it. Basic and Advanced, at the very least. With ratings. Eg: you need 200 points to be Basic, 600 for Advanced. SQL and PL/SQL count 100 each, for Basic. Backup and Recovery counts 200, so that's enough for Basic (why on Earth would a developer want to know intricacies of B&R or RMAN?). That's enough for a site that wants a certified person to cope with daily B&R routine. No need to spend incredible amounts training the punter in advanced performance tuning or distributed stuff, for example. Sure, as a future option. But not mandatory as is now.

More granularity would be even better. Just too much stuff as is. What happens now is the candidate studies for each exam and promptly forgets about it while studying for the next. Bugger all value. Sure: exposure. But totally unnecessary in many cases, IMHO.

Now, pricing. I think they should do something to address the chasm between theirs and other's. Extras are welcome for their much needed variation or even usefulness. But I can understand the person forking out the $$$ getting cheesed off at paying for OLAP when all they wanted was a solid vanilla SQL and/or PL/SQL engine.

Competitors are very good at reducing prices by chopping features and functions off their product. That's how they can claim lah-lah-land TCO's and such. Classic. Try to do anything out of the basics and the "$$$$-options" start rolling in.

This is being strongly helped by the "J2EE brigade" and their attitude that the DB is a basic storage engine, everything else should be coded in the application. Great "job-security" for them, we know. But it doesn't help O's case at all. Neither does it help the client, who is just replacing DB-dependency by coder-dependency.

Anyways, just my $0.02 worth. I know, I'm cheap. :-)

Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam Received on Wed Aug 22 2001 - 09:30:22 CDT