1992 VOUG survey results (text)

I promised to post the summary of the results of the 1992 Vancouver Oracle Users Group (VOUG) a couple of months ago. Due to editorial delays, the newsletter that it appeared in wasn't published until about three weeks ago. Then came IOUW. Now I'm almost caught up.

Obviously this isn't as nice without all of the graphs, but I hope that it gives a feel for the results. If other user groups are interested in conducting a survey, feel free to drop me a line. If you'd like a version with graphs, I could FAX a copy out (as long as I don't have too many requests).

I'd really be interested if other groups already have any results that they would like to share with the world.

1992 VOUG*Survey Results
Peter A. Grant, TRIUMF

The results of this year's VOUG user survey are in and, as reported at the May general meeting, some of the numbers are surprising. We received 52 responses, which is up from last year, so the results can be expected to reflect reality a little more closely.

The first chart, showing the number of users, reflects the fact that most (about 75%) of the local ORACLE shops are small (under 25 users). There are a small number of really big Oracle installations (more than 100 users).

The second graph is one of the most interesting, but it needs a few words of description: the numbers indicate how many installations have each platform - not the number of platforms. Half of the respondents run Oracle on PC's, many of which form part of a client-server architecture. Still, PC's are the most common platform. I was very surprised by the fact that Sun is in number two - last year it came in fourth after PC's, VAX's, and DG's. The VAX has slipped from second to third. Considering that the VAX used to be Oracle's major platform, this is quite a change. The one other big change this year is the fact that HP came in fourth thanks entirely to their HP9000. The RISC machines have come on quite strongly, with the offerings from IBM and DEC starting to add up (these are the RS/6000 and the DECstation 5000). The age of the mainframe certainly seems to have come to an end, with only two installations responding.

Last year's top two operating systems have switched places. Believe it or not, DOS was number one by a large amount last year, with UNIX coming in second. This year the roles are reversed, and UNIX has nearly half of the share with DOS now second, as far as the number of sites running Oracle under these OSs. VMS, AOS, and the others remain unchanged. DOS and UNIX are obviously two firm environments that are surviving. Also, the average site runs two copies of the ORACLE kernel.

Oracle users around BC are catching up with the 90's! The use of V6 of the ORACLE database has shot up from 27% to 75% in the past year. Likewise, use of SQL*Forms V3.0 has increased from 5% to over 50%. Presumably most new applications are being done with V3, while there still remains a large base of recently developed applications which were developed in V2. Certainly SQL*Forms conversion is going to remain a hot topic this year, as most people would rather be running V3.

SQL*Plus is the most common product, not surprisingly. SQL*Menu, SQL*ReportWriter, and SQL*Report are next. SQL*Net is used by nearly half of the local sites. I think that we will see SQL*Net's percentage grow in the next year to perhaps become the second most common product. The most popular Oracle CASE tool is CASE*Dictionary, with the Designer and Generator each a few percent behind each other. Apparently a number of people are just using the dictionary as a repository - a safe first step towards CASE. SQR is the most popular non-Oracle product reported - used at 7% of sites reporting. There are even four Oracle*Card owners. Only one Oracle*Mail user reported, however. There were also a fair number of third-party products with one or two users each - these primarily being PC-based products.

The areas that people are planning to address in the next year are networking, CASE, front-ends, hardware upgrades, reporting tools, workstations, and archive tools. I hope we'll be able to arrange meetings that focus on these topics in the next year. I'm not surprised by networking being number one. Client-server has become necessary in many areas now that distributed computing has brought about a strong shift away from the centralized refrigerator.

People think that Oracle's products are pretty darned good. Nearly 50% of people rated their products as above average. Personally, while I remain very opinionated and vocal about their products, I continue to strongly recommend their use in developing systems, in spite of some growing competition from Sybase and a number of other vendors. When it comes right down to it, the database itself is excellent.

Oracle's Educational Services brought about the most discussion at the last user group meeting. The results indicate that 60% of the respondents felt the courses were average or above average. People related widely different experiences at Oracle's courses. Many were very pleased, while others had experienced situations in which they knew more about the subject matter than the teacher. One suggestion was to inquire who is scheduled to be the instructor before registering for the course. More than half of the survey respondents take database courses from other companies. The average is more than three courses per company per year.

People are generally happy with technical support. Again there were dramatically different experiences with support. Some users get the impression that they are speaking to a summer students reading from a manual. The bottom line seemed to be: find out who can help you and what their phone number is and stick to that person. A couple of people have experienced support through California and feel that it is far superior. The time difference between here and Toronto can still cause problems with support service. It also appears that only 60% of the respondents have support contracts with Oracle.

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