Oracle Installation Experiences

From: <mitchj_at_VNET.IBM.COM>
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

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