Re: Oracle support...

Coen Fischer (coen_at_rivm.nl) wrote:
: Several people have moaned and groaned about ORACLE technical support
: over the last two years.

This seems to differ _very_ much between countries. In Finland I've found this absolutely the best part of the company, even if it's not cheap.

Most cases has been solved during the initial phone conversation and this is great, because many of them have been very urgent - how to get the database up again etc. In my cases it might be easier thoug, since I like to wait a year or so before changing into a new major release so they have had time to collect experiences.

Only once I got a totally disasterous advice from them. I would have lost my database, if I had't thought it twice and called for another opinion to their other site in Finland (thank's Risto).

Once we lost our database in the afternoon and got things back in order only after 6 pm. Then we found out that our backups were not perfect. It was version 5 and the BI was not in the tape. It was empty of course, but it was diffent version so Oracle did't start. We started to ring all Oracle direct lines we knew and after a while someone answered and luckily he knew what was to be done. We spent several hours typing and testing and editing his Cobol-program, in the end we had to call him at his home to get final advises. It was about midnight that we finally got the date and time stamps inside the BI-file correct and RDBMS started ok.

This is the kind of service that I would not expect from many companies. And it is not the only time that I have had to call someone of them home after hours.

This opinion covers only Oracle support and does not mean that I would by equally satisfied with all their products or their company policies - since I am not.

Regards, Hessu

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Heikki Rissanen, United Papermills, Rauma, Finland
Email: heikki.rissanen_at_ra.upm.tietotie.mailnet.fi
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