Oracle: Naked King in database land?

Hi,

I am getting quite frustrated about Oracle and would like to get an idea if I am just being stupid, doing everything wrong, accidently using Beta versions or using the wrong OS or just unlucky or what? I am getting the impression that Oracle is
like the vi text-editor: for freaks only and even freaks are quite easy to beat using most more modern software solutions.

I am constantly having problems with Oracle server on three hardware platforms, AMD and Intel, 1+ Ghz, 1.5+ Gbyte, no Raid, Raid 0, 1, 1+0, 5, enough free disk and table space. All on MS Windows 2000 server (maybe that is the problem?) and win NT, Win2K and WinXP as client. Oracle 9.01 and 9.02. The problems below occur only when using tables larger than about 250 000 records, but on amounts below that I would really consider using MS-Access or something the like (don't start on transactions, multi-user, security etc., to me that's the vi freak - much used argument for little used features - point of view)

Problems encountered in the last few weeks:
* crashing the whole database running an insert query, having to reinstall
and rebuild the whole thing (once)
* spontaneous shutdown of the database running an insert query (twice)

• constantly having ORA4030 (out of memory errors) when using Designer created insert-triggers
• crashing oracle expert client when trying to view tuning recommendations
• very time-consuming TAR handling, having to install patch on patch on patch and sending trace after trace after trace until you give up (I would prefer to send them script + data and get replies only when they solve the easily reproducible, common case, problem).
• internal errors ORA00600 when using "order by" on indexed 1.5 million record tables
• internal errors ORA00600 when creating indexes on large tables
• does "end of communication channel" sound familiar?
• prehistoric net client. Why not use dns + port by default and invent those error prone tnsnames workarounds only for "probably better but much less used" alternative network systems? Why install thousands of files and millions of bytes as smallest version oracle net client and not include an odbc driver by default on the 98% most used OS in the world?
• so what is revolutionary about having multiple long/blob columns in a single table?
• queries crash when autoextending tablespaces start to autoextend even on lots of empty disk space
• getting a "processor too fast" diagnose for (a previous version) oracle installer
• query optimizer clearly less intelligent than MS-Access and MySQL on some cases. Never found to be more intelligent.(Oracle workaround: analyze tables compute statistics, forcing use of indexes by removing wrongly used ones, forcing change of query execution plan by using nested queries).
• unable to first-time connect to oracle from a new process within 1 second (necessary for standard websever cgi implementations). As comparison: MS-Access and MySQL connect times are negligable.
• etc.

Then why, you may ask, am I still using Oracle?
* my boss tells me to and our customers believe they will have a very robust
and stable database solution
* after spending a huge amount of time on building and tuning the database,
I must admit, the lookup-queries are quite fast
* Oracle being the largest and best known database software, I am probably
too much of a newbee and after some more experience I hope to find the yet undiscovered but must-be-there goodies of the software

Are you, as an Oracle user, dba or developer constantly solving such problems as I mentioned above or are you, not like me, able to spend your time on creating new queries, views and reports, making easy backups and only very occasional but successfull restores, easily importing and exporting data to all kinds of sources, integrating the software in all sorts of environments and doing more such productive work as the sales department has promised when the database was sold to you? Or is Oracle, as I am starting to suspect, the Naked King in database land? Received on Tue Apr 01 2003 - 18:44:53 CST