Re: Is Oracle really worth it?

inferno2000_at_my-deja.com (inferno2000) wrote in message news:<a9390719.0112121813.43a367d0_at_posting.google.com>...
> After a long and quiet 1.5 years in operation, our Oracle database
> once again runs into wierd, undocumented internal error (ora-600
> [12700],[1493234693],[93]) during mission-critical processes. The
> process halts upon error and it takes quite awhile before the problem
> is resolved to continue normal operation.
>
> Query to Oracle results in explaination which clearly cannot be
> foreseen or prevented in anyway. It makes me wonder then, does Oracle
> really worth it? Is there no way to count on Oracle to behave
> properly? Can't a bug free process be expected to always run to
> completion when using Oracle database? If Oracle is not the answer,
> does that mean Microsoft or SyBase SQL server is the better database
> as far as stability and reliabiltiy is concerned?
>
> I would also like to point out that I have been working with Oracle
> database for 7 long years. And this is not the first time it
> crashed/aborted with an internal error. Such shortcoming may be ok for
> less time-critical operations, but it really is unacceptable for
> mission-critial system.

About the time you started with ORACLE, I was doing an evaluation for a client of database products. Since the database was going to be embedded in a Medical system, reliability was a very critical issue. At that time, based on my research and testing, ORACLE came out on top, even over some very inexpensive and fast products. The others all had flaws either in features (primarily ease of development) or in execution (one product I benchmarked issued runtime errors on the toy database I tried). I've grown to trust ORACLE for misson critical (and medical critical) operations.

Based on the little information you provide, it seems that your production application is stressing ORACLE somehow. There's bound to be some solution (possibly a workaround Kludge like a restart every 6months or so?) that can keep you running.

AFAIK, at the top end of scale (I assume you are dealing with a really large database) the big three are still ORACLE, DB2, and maybe SYBASE. Other RDBMSs are likely to run into even more problems than what you'll find in those three. Yes those INTERNAL Oracle errors can be annoying, but once in 1.5years is not really that bad is it?

It's really up to you to decide if it's worth it. Define your requirements and see if something else really can serve you better. Make sure you test that other product with production sized data and transaction rates. I'd bet you don't change if you really check into the other products.

Ed

(DISCALIMER: my only affiliate to ORACLE is that most of my clients and my own company use it's products.) Received on Fri Dec 14 2001 - 17:32:22 CST