Oracle Installation Experiences
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 94 15:56:30 EDT
Message-ID: <19940919.131959.60_at_almaden.ibm.com>
First my background, I have over 10 years experience installing data base and data communication products (IBM and non-IBM) on MVS, OS/2 and AIX. During this time I have developed expectations regarding product installation and customization. I have also developed a sensitively to making calls to technical support for what eventually turns out to be an user error. As a result, I go to a great deal of effort to eliminate user errors before making such calls.
The following report documents my experiences and personal observations with installing various Oracle products on AIX and OS/2. My experiences may not be typical of all Oracle customers but they probably were during the same time period.
The installation of the Oracle7 server was tedious and a labor intensive process. A significant amount of time was expended on preparation and system setup. For example, the product's entire directory structure had to be manually created and primed.
During the database manager installation and customization, 2 problems were encountered which required contacting Oracle technical support.
First, the instructions for activating network access were incorrect. There were instructions in the installation manual regarding copying a file from an Oracle directory to a system directory. Not only did the file not exist, the Oracle directory where the file was supposed to reside did not exist. I reinstalled the product and the file still did not exist on my system. At this point, I contacted Oracle technical support and opened a severity 1 TAR (equivalent to an IBM PMR). After waiting several days for a response, I started calling Oracle's technical assistance number. I never had an option to speak with a technical support person; I could only leave messages on their phone mail system. Each time their phone mail message promised that I would receive call back within 24 hours, which never happened. Finally, I contacted the Oracle sales representative. I informed him that I had a severity 1 problem opened for two weeks and had yet to receive any assistance. When we had purchased the products, we had selected the support option, but this additional cost was providing no benefit. Within 24 hours I received a call from an Oracle Technical support manager. I described my problem about the missing file and was then informed that the documentation was wrong, the file did not exist and the step to copy this file was not necessary.... I then continued with my installation after waiting for two weeks.
The next problem dealt with trying to activate TCP/IP connections for clients. The command to start the connection was failing, and Oracle's technical support was contacted. Eventually, I managed to talk to an technical support person. His analysis was that my problem was caused by a failure by the installation process to properly link TCP/IP support into the product. The technical support person provided the commands to do this manually and this resolved my problem.
Finally, I installed Oracle's COBOL precompiler product (PRO*COBOL) on an OS/2 client. Everything went well until mid way-during the installation when I encountered a requirement for Oracle's SQL*PLUS. This was the first I learned of this requirement and I had to suspend the installation until this product could be obtained. Finally, I tried to execute the sample program provided with PRO*COBOL. The sample program failed because of missing tables on the server. I contacted Oracle technical support and managed to talk to about every support group at Oracle (COBOL language, tools, AIX, OS/2, etc). My initial hurdle was to convince them that I was not experiencing an user error. I finally convinced then that I was literally using their products straight out of the box and faithfully following their instructions. Finally, I was connected to a technical support person who managed to identify a known ORACLE7 server problem and was able to provide me the commands to create the necessary tables. I then asked if there was any way for a customer to avoid rediscovery (i.e., preventative service) and was informed Oracle did not provide this facility to their customers.
My experiences with installing and customizing Oracle Products were definitively educational, and most certainly affected my expectations for installing and supporting Oracle products in the future.
Mitch Johnson Received on Mon Sep 19 1994 - 21:56:30 CEST