Re: Oracle Metalink Problems

On Sat, 18 Oct 1997 csimich_at_mail.ue.com.au wrote:
>
> Could anyone (particularly Oracle officials) comment on the sudden
> change in availability patterns of Oracle Metalink web pages. Since
> they changed to the new interface, the system has been unavailable
> quite frequently and no explanation of causes or indidcation on when
> will it be available again (during the outages) is given. The attemps
> to find that information from their web master only resulted in an
> automatic answer a week ago and no follow up. The system is
> unavailable again, right now.
>
> It seems that this type of service is seen as free (though only
> available to Oracle 'metals' support subscribers) and not treated with
> the same 'respect' one would provide to other type of commercial
> sevices.

I have noticed this, and found Client Relations to be quite evasive on the topic. Finally, I received the following form letter after complaining quite a few times.

At the beginning, I actually saw Oracle errors bubbling up through their code to the web interface. Now, it ususally just never returns a page, or one or more of the frames will just say "The requested URL was not found." One person with whom I spoke claimed that some 3rd party software that they were using for the new service had failed to scale, and is to blame for the current dismal service.

I think the best solution is for everyone who is inconvenienced by this to request a refund of a portion of their support fees from their sales representative. Oracle apparently has realized that they can have Metalink remain broken, and continue to collect on support contract fees.

If one considers the metalink outage to be below "generally accepted industry standards," as services are warrented in Oracle's form license, then the current extended outage could be considered breech of contract.

--
Jeremiah Wilton      http://www.wolfenet.com/~jeremiah

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Date: 20 Oct 97 17:25:08 -0700
From:   <ESSRV_at_us.oracle.com>
Subject: Re: Metalink service problems

Hi Jeremiah,   
   
We greatly appreciate your feedback.  
  
We're painfully aware of the problems you have been experiencing with
MetaLink  
and the impact those problems are having on our customer base.   
  
Unfortunately, the unprecedented demand for the newly released MetaLink  
services uncovered performance and stability issues that escaped detection  
during our pre-release testing.  
  
We are now working aggressively with some of the finest technical
resources in 
the  
company to resolve these problems as expeditiously as possible.  
  
In the interim, you can rest assured that the difficulties you have  
encountered have been made visible to the highest management levels within  
Oracle Corporation and that we will continue to dedicate the resources  
required until these problems are resolved.  
  
Regards,   
   
Web Services Registrar   
Oracle Worldwide Customer Support Services   
http://support.oracle.com/metalink/   
http://support.oracle.com/OracleMERCURY/   
http://support.oracle.com/DevConnect/  

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