Re: Installation of Oracle 8.1.7 - Nasty Bug

yep. they test the software. document the bugs. ship the software off to the CD presses. and distribute the CDs.

the one thing that Oracle can't test is the software as it is installed and used in every customer's environment.

it's my belief that they estimate the severity of the bugs, and any bugs that cause the database to lose integrity or crash background processes are probably highest priority. other priorities are probably assigned based on how severe the bug is, the frequency with which it occurs, and the number of customers that the bug is affecting, and whether or not a workaround exists.

but it's not just Oracle that does this. there are a lot of successful software companies do the same thing. it's not as if this is a recent innovation in the software industry. successful products don't have to be "perfect", they just need to be "good enough". if a company were to wait until a software product was perfect before releasing it, they'd be out of business before they shipped anything.

some customers install the latest version, discover the problems, and report the problems back to the vendor, and are performing the "real world" testing. there's a reason this is referred to as the "bleeding edge."

some customers prefer to stay a little further back from the leading edge. and let's face it, some customers are far enough back from the leading edge that they are in danger of falling off the trailing edge.

"Peter C. Hugger" <phugger_at_home.com> wrote in message news:94s2fo$4cp_at_nnrp4.farm.idt.net...
> We did one upgrade to v8.1.7 and spent the next day downgrading it back to
> v8.1.6. There is a very nasty bug in v8.1.7 that will not allow you to
> perform certain queries across a database link. If you use any kind of NOT
> IN or NOT EXISTS clause in your query you are out of luck. Oracles
 response
> is - yeah it's a bug. Do they test their software?
>
>
> PCH
>
>
Received on Sat Jan 27 2001 - 19:21:26 CST