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Review: Oracle Database 12c

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Riyaj Shamsudeen offers an in-depth look at Oracle Database 12c, which he calls a 'true cloud database,' bringing a new level of efficiency and ease to database consolidation. 'In development for roughly four years, Oracle Database 12c introduces so many important new capabilities in so many areas — database consolidation, query optimization, performance tuning, high availability, partitioning, backup and recovery — that even a lengthy review has to cut corners. Nevertheless, in addition to covering the big ticket items, I'll give a number of the lesser enhancements their due,' writes Riyaj Shamsudeen. 'Having worked with the beta for many months, I can tell you that the quality of software is also impressive, starting with a smooth RAC cluster installation. As with any new software release, I did encounter a few minor bugs. Hopefully these have been resolved in the production release that arrived yesterday.'"

95 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Abject Shillery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Shouldn't shill articles be over on SlashBusinessCrap or whatever?

  2. New features? by webmistressrachel · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Backup and restore are new features in this latest version of the Oracle Database??

    How on earth did they manage before?! Seriously? Is it just me or am I the only person who writes programs from scratch with data security, portability and safety in mind? Gosh, My data has been separate from the program since I was loading out to 90-minute Type II's!

    I mean, seriously, from this article can we assume that mysqldump offered a more sensible backup than every version of the mega-expensive Oracle, until this version?

    --
    This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
    1. Re:New features? by alen · · Score: 2, Informative

      lots of third party backup programs support Oracle and SQL server to back up the databases online

      last i looked at mysql you had to shut down the database or dump it to another db and then backup the file. too expensive to do this on a 200Gb database sitting on a SAN

    2. Re:New features? by segedunum · · Score: 1

      last i looked at mysql you had to shut down the database or dump it to another db and then backup the file. too expensive to do this on a 200Gb database sitting on a SAN

      I cannot fathom where you've picked this up from.

    3. Re:New features? by hamster_nz · · Score: 4, Informative

      I didn't read that from TFA - just that object level restores have been improved, as has some compression features.

      Just so everybody is aware Oracle has always had kick-ass restore and recovery features, way ahead of other database - such things as Flashback, it has been shipping transaction logs since Noah was a boy, and the good ol' "ALERT TABLESPACE BEGIN BACKUP" to allow you to copy files online. It can perform change block tracking on database datafiles to allow increment backups "ALTER DATABASE ENABLE BLOCK CHANGE TRACKING USING FILE ;". All of this is platform independent too.

      Recovery is also awesome. "ALTER DATABASE RECOVER UNTIL [timestamp]", "ALTER DATABASE RECOVERY UNTIL CANCEL", "ALTER DATABASE UNTIL CHANGE [transaction number]" and so on. If you accidentally loose you control files (somewhat like your MS-SQL master database being trashed) you can recreate them using SQL.

      The big problem is that you have to be doing a lot of it to be good at it, many very think books have been written on Oracle backup and restore. So tools like Oracle's RMAN have been created to manage the process for DBAs...

    4. Re:New features? by alen · · Score: 2

      so which backup programs support mysql natively

      like i install an agent, set a policy on the backup server and have it backup to my tape library automatically without dumping the data to another storage device?

    5. Re:New features? by F.Ultra · · Score: 2

      mysqldump? But what you are doing, i.e backup of the database files directly, is a very dangerous form of backup. Restoring such when the database has been corrupted for whatever reason is not something I would enjoy, so going by an ascii dump like mysqldump does is way more saner from that perspective, it's of course also way more slow.

    6. Re:New features? by Gwala · · Score: 4, Informative

      mysqldump can and will lock tables during its backup - there's some tricks around this; but on a big production database, its really suboptimal.

      --
      #!/bin/csh cat $0
    7. Re:New features? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Informative

      I see you're a dedicated full-time Oracle support guy. I don't know of a lot of other products that require a full-time support person to do (conceptually) simple stuff. My biggest complaint about Oracle has always been that to even take it out of the box and install it required guru-level Oracle knowledge, much less keeping it running well. I absolutely hate all things Microsoft, but at least you can install Squeel Server and set up backups without two days effort and an overwhelming desire to stick a gun in your mouth.

    8. Re:New features? by alen · · Score: 4, Informative

      one of the selling points of sql server and oracle is you can backup the database directly while its running. you can backup the database, by separate files and file groups

      SQL server you can even have the database online during a restore. you restore the main file group and then the others. all the data may not be there, but the database will be able to server applications with some data. you can always move your tables around so that the most important ones get restored first

      with SQL server on decent hardware from the last 2-3 years you can backup a database during business hours and your users will never know. i do it all the time

    9. Re:New features? by war4peace · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a complex product. of course it has a point-and-grunt installer, but anything else requires configuring the product, and it doesn't have an "easy mode", simply because it's not targeting "simple people".

      You're thinking from a tiny point of view (small company or personal). And yes, in this case, oracle DB might not be for you. But a company which makes arguably billions off data located in an oracle DB Cluster doesn't care whether the DB needs 0, 1, or 25 people who manage it. Whatever the costs are, they represent a tiny fraction of the profits.

      if your monthly profit is $10K then your DB costs might need to be below $200. However, make your monthly profit $500M, then you can afford spending anywhere between $200K and $1M a month on the DB and its support (licensed or in-house) and even more.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    10. Re:New features? by jbolden · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what line you are talking about. There are a few references in the article to backup and recovery like, "In addition, you can back up and recover pluggable databases independently of the container database" which say nothing remotely like Oracle didn't have backup and recovery. The backup strategies that MySQL uses were developed by Oracle usually a decade or two before.

    11. Re:New features? by malkavian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The complexity often sets the ceiling.
      SQL Server is pretty simple out of the box, and with a reasonable toolset to let you administer it. I trust it to a level. However, cost 'savings' being what they are, a lot of companies who do not understand exactly what it is they're asking, will hire someone who can click the SQL Server buttons on the GUI and change a tape.
      They're cheaper than an in depth DBA that groks the environment by a long shot. However, when it comes emergency time, I really don't trust that things will go smoothly.

      Oracle has the starting point that you need to know a few of the bits under the hood, so you actually start to understand what's really going on (it tries not to hide the messy details from you), seems to come with the kitchen sink (though occasionally with a fair mortgage as well), and requires staff that actually know what they're about; it actively encourages you to go deeper all the time.

      I don't have a problem with a product that's geared for high end enterprise requiring a guru level knowledge to actually get going. At that level, you really should have the skills to back your actions up with.

    12. Re:New features? by jbolden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      First off installing Oracle does not require guru knowledge. They write pretty good installation guides. Developers install Oracle for themselves all the time. I will agree it is much harder than SQLServer to install but that's a SQLServer strength.

      Oracle is a professional product. It exists at the top end for people who want to be able to manually configure and tweak the database to get the most out of it. It also allows for complex configurations that the other systems don't. It the database server hardware cost is in 4 or 5 figures, and the configuration isn't extremely complex don't use Oracle. When you compare Oracle to SQLServer compare a setup of a database distributed over 4 continents involving $20m in server hardware because that's where all that complexity really shines.

    13. Re:New features? by Vanderhoth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is all very true. For a small website MySQL or MariaDB are fine. I work in government and we collect, process and create terrabytes of ocean data a month for weather, sea ice, waves, salinity, temperature, oxygen, species migration, satellite imagery, and tons of other things. I hate Oracle because of their business practices and general asshatery as much as the next techie, but for large databases that require the kind of collection, processing and modeling we do, Oracle is all there is.

      You're especially right that there's no "easy mode". I think it'd be silly to include such a thing and dumb down such a hugely complex product to a level that you might as well be using MySQL or MariaDB. And for the amount of data we deal with and the number of database instances we have, yes it's a full time DB admin job. God forbid the someone was to pull a Bobby tables because we didn't have someone qualified creating and maintaining the databases at all times.

    14. Re:New features? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/2.1/

      "Percona XtraBackup is an open-source hot backup utility for MySQL - based servers that doesn’t lock your database during the backup."

      http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/backup.html

      "MySQL Enterprise Backup performs online Hot, non-blocking backups of your MySQL databases."

    15. Re:New features? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      I suppose I should have pointed out that I'm speaking as a developer of an independant application who has to (transparently) support multple database types. Oracle is the one that consistantly makes me want to tear my hair out.

    16. Re:New features? by FictionPimp · · Score: 1

      commvault, zmanda, tivoli?

    17. Re:New features? by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What modern SQL server does not have some method of doing this? Even if it requires outside programs running against it?

      Please stop calling MS SQL server, sql server it makes it sound like it is the only one.

    18. Re:New features? by advid.net · · Score: 1

      It can perform change block tracking on database datafiles to allow increment backups "ALTER DATABASE ENABLE BLOCK CHANGE TRACKING USING FILE ;".

      Note: block change tracking is used to reduce reads in case of incremental backup. It is not required to allow incremental backup.

    19. Re:New features? by benjymouse · · Score: 2

      mysqldump? But what you are doing, i.e backup of the database files directly, is a very dangerous form of backup. Restoring such when the database has been corrupted for whatever reason

      Actually no, it is not dangerous provided that you use a backup agent or an operating system that supports this. Windows does, Linux and Unix do not.

      On Windows the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) will interact with registered processes to coordinate *when* they should ensure persistent consistency - which is reserved as a fraction of a second. It requires the processes to register as VSS writers - which database servers generally do (Oracle and SQL Server do - I do not know if MySQL does).

      On Windows in a virtual environment this will even propagate through VM volumes, i.e. if you backup the host of the VMs (where some of the VMs could be running database servers), the host VSS service will ask the guest VSS service to ensure consistency right when the disk image file is being backed up. This means that you can backup the host Hyper-V server with all the disk images and rest assured that the VMs are consistent.

      Huge boon for uptime.

      --
      Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
    20. Re:New features? by andawyr · · Score: 1

      You can do log shipping with mysql to have multiple sync'd databases - I've set this up in a small environment, and have not tested this feature with a high-capacity database, but the capability *is* there.

    21. Re:New features? by HockeyPuck · · Score: 1

      I work at a fortune 100 company.. Where else do we have dedicated support personnel?

      Mainframe operators/programmers
      Storage (HDS & netapp) admins
      DBAs
      Network (L2/L3) and another team that handles L4-7 and security like firewalls
      VMware admins
      Aix admins

      Damn. You must work at one awesome company since your DBA can do all of that. He or she should get a raise.

    22. Re:New features? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      process and create terrabytes of ocean data

      A real dba would never make such a typo. I smell something fishy here.

    23. Re:New features? by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      My keyboard is old and has had a lot of coffee spilled on it. Lately the keys stick a bit. Had I spelled it tarriebytes I might be able to see your concern, but one extra 'r' doesn't really count as a serious typo.

      I'm not a DBA and I never made that claim, I'm a developer. Some of the applications I write are front ends for researchers to access data stored in Oracle databases. Some applications are for modeling data and comparing models against hindcasts. There is a lot of data.

    24. Re:New features? by pak9rabid · · Score: 1

      God forbid the someone was to pull a Bobby tables [xkcd.com] because we didn't have someone qualified creating and maintaining the databases at all times.

      Wouldn't preventing a "Bobby tables" incident be more on the application developers plate than the DBA's?

    25. Re:New features? by jbolden · · Score: 1

      As for installing from the guides. I've done it many times, it does work. And they are extremely detailed. I often do look at websites for more information but the official oracle guide is my primary source.

      I'm not young, I'm not a shill. Oracle's documentation is rather good. No one writes 100k+ pages of professional quality documentation per version and intentionally cripples it. Absolutely Oracle Press and other 3rd party writers do a good job in providing documentation, often because you have writers and not technical writers involved. And there is better up to the minute information in their various forums, no question.

      But can you many products with better documentation?

    26. Re:New features? by Tailhook · · Score: 1

      install [...] a SQLServer strength.

      Microsoft has accomplished easy installation on a single platform. 12 c is fully supported on many versions of 5 major operating systems. The installation GUI (yes, the whining is about a system with a GUI/wizard installer you can blast through banging on 'next'...) is pretty consistent across platforms.

      It's not hipster software. Oracle has the conceit to expect sufficient experience to follow some basic instructions. Nevertheless developers get it done every day without drama.

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    27. Re:New features? by Vanderhoth · · Score: 1

      Yes, as I'm an application developer that is why it came to mind. My reason for pointing it out is because the DBA would be responsible for cleaning up the mess of some bad application developer if that situation was to arise. I'm not the only application dev in my group and am far more knowledgeable than some of my coworkers, and far less knowledgeable than others.

      That being said, my understanding is if a DBA does a good job setting up permissions and uses DBA terms, such as materialized view, they can reduce the chance of an application dev messing things up in the first place.

    28. Re:New features? by RaceProUK · · Score: 1

      It doesn't - that's what the DBMS is for.

      --
      No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
    29. Re:New features? by nairnr · · Score: 1

      Backup and restore are new features in this latest version of the Oracle Database??

      How on earth did they manage before?! Seriously? Is it just me or am I the only person who writes programs from scratch with data security, portability and safety in mind? Gosh, My data has been separate from the program since I was loading out to 90-minute Type II's!

      I mean, seriously, from this article can we assume that mysqldump offered a more sensible backup than every version of the mega-expensive Oracle, until this version?

      No, it says that it has new capabilities - not that backing up is new to Oracle...

    30. Re:New features? by jbolden · · Score: 1

      (yes, the whining is about a system with a GUI/wizard installer you can blast through banging on 'next'

      In all fairness to the critics, except on Windows, I've never been able to get an install to work out of the box using the GUI. It has always required I do the "pre prep" and unfortunately often some post prep work. On Windows wow is Oracle is easy to install, uninstall is really hard however.

    31. Re:New features? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      > mysqldump? But what you are doing, i.e backup of the database files directly, is a very dangerous form of backup.

      mysqldump you must be joking. That is kiddie stuff.

      Oracle has been able to do online hot backups of individual datafiles since at least version 7 in the 90s. Hot backups and point and time recovery for serious relational databases has been the bare minimum acceptable standard since before anyone ever heard of mysql.

      Comments like yours is why people get the impression that mysql isn't ready for serious work.

      Oracle has had robust features in many of the categories mentioned by this advertisement for a very long time. It is a stupid ad.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    32. Re:New features? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      >> mysqldump? But what you are doing, i.e backup of the database files directly, is a very dangerous form of backup. Restoring such when the database has been corrupted for whatever reason
      >
      > Actually no, it is not dangerous provided that you use a backup agent or an operating system that supports this. Windows does, Linux and Unix do not.

      Lemming propaganda nonsense.

      The database ensures integrity. It does this with things like transaction logging and transaction isolation. It doesn't require any special "Windows only" technology. It's just a feature of a robust database engine.

      Database recovery is a feature of the database, not of the filesystem.

      "fraction of a second" is still too slow for an Enterprise database. Query response times for a real database is simply not measured in seconds.

      Stupid amateurs!

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    33. Re:New features? by bad-badtz-maru · · Score: 1

      Based on what you are saying, Oracle is essentially a niche product for huge data consumers. Why is it so aggressively marketed to businesses of nearly any size? They buy in and then the administration expenses, coupled with licensing, eat their lunch. Oracle's sales are marketing-driven, that's why we see it in so many businesses.

    34. Re:New features? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      That only goes so far. Any application needs to be able to shoot the user in the foot. Otherwise it's not powerful enough to do anything useful.

      You may not be able to drop a table but you certainly can wipe it.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    35. Re:New features? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Installing a trivial Oracle database is not the chore it used to be. It's not 1997 anymore. You can get an Oracle database up and running pretty easy. You can even do things with it without needing to be a guru.

      Once you get past that point, things get interesting fast.

      Although that's true for other products as well. Microsoft likes to sell the idea that a trained monkey can manage a serious RDBMS but it's simply not the case.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    36. Re:New features? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      VSS may provide file consistency, but how does it provide database consistency ?

      The VSS writer role defines a protocol (a COM interface) which the database vendor implements. The point is that it is an OS defined infrastructure. The protocol defines how the os interacts with the vss writer to coordinate when the vss writer (ie Oracle) ensures file consistency.

      Obviously it requires the application to be written to support the vs writer role. But once that is done, the os can ensure cnsistency also cross different apps, ie database files, file system storage, message queue storage etc.

    37. Re:New features? by jbo5112 · · Score: 1

      Off the top of my head: Hadoop, HBase, PHP, jQuery, JAVA, the Linux Kernel (e.g. make menuconfig), and MySQL all have better documentation than Oracle. I have trouble thinking of something that slashdot readers would know about with worse documentation.

      No one but Oracle writes documentation in numbered pages anymore. It's a horrible format for getting around data in this newfangled age of hypertext links, which Oracle uses painfully sparingly. Their docs are extremely wordy, not extremely detailed. The details are disorganized and horribly lacking (e.g. set some variable to some value, with no explanation of how or what it's affecting). If you're so sure of the level of detail, then show me the guide on deciphering ORA-0600 errors without going through paid support (who always asked for tons of info, then started by telling me to recover from a backup and see if that fails). While installing from the Oracle guides does work, installing a single-node HBase server in 2010 was easier (and ran not just circles, but knitted-doilies around Oracle in terms of performance).

    38. Re:New features? by Nelson · · Score: 1

      HBase and Hadoop is a very interesting option for certain kinds of data. It becomes more and more interesting as you add more and more machines too...

      I have no idea how the data is structured or how it is queried and worked with but HBase may be a very interesting option. Once you dork around with the configs a bit and get it booted up, it's insanely easy to scale it.

    39. Re:New features? by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      Recovery is also awesome. "ALTER DATABASE RECOVER UNTIL [timestamp]", "ALTER DATABASE RECOVERY UNTIL CANCEL", "ALTER DATABASE UNTIL CHANGE [transaction number]" and so on.

      PostgreSQL has had this sort of feature for a few years now, see recovery target. The main thing Oracle is better at is giving a simpler UI to this work. This sort of ALTER DATABASE interface is easier to use than the config file approach Postgres uses. Similarly, Oracle Flashback is a slicker interface to look at old data than you get out of the box with Postgres, but the same under the hood look is possible in both databases.

      The differences in the backup/recovery area are pretty small now though, especially now that UI clones such as pgbarman are available. The last time I wanted a better UI to part of this that wasn't in any of the available free tools yet, I paid a few thousand dollars to the pgbarman developers and they added it for me. Companies who are willing to spend some money on licensed software really should consider what spending the same amount on improving PostgreSQL would get them.

    40. Re:New features? by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      Marketing will try to sell things to anyone that will buy them. The only companies who can easily demonstrate a real need for Oracle are larger installations. My job involves getting a lower total cost of ownership out of PostgreSQL for the sizes it can handle, rough practical limit is around 5TB right now, and that's easy to pull off in most cases. For a fraction of what an Oracle license costs, you can get support from a company that does source code level contributor to one of the open-source databases. And since you're not dependent on the company itself for help, you can take on as much of the administrator work as you'd like. There are so many horror stories about companies getting giant monstrosities built because they got Oracle consultants involved in a project. They love using the fancy features because it gives job security and your license costs go up.

      Oracle's marketing is starting to dip into FUD mode now about just how viable the open-source alternatives are to them. It's pretty funny to watch that coming out of one end, while they continue buying those very companies with the other. The main thing Oracle has going for it is that while good people are expensive, there are a lot of them out there. It is pretty hard to hire a good PostgreSQL DBA right now.

    41. Re:New features? by Aaden42 · · Score: 1

      Which makes me wonder how close "Excel" and "PowerPoint" are to falling out of trademark protection à la Kleenex or Aspirin? I can't remember the last time someone using OpenOffice referred to their slide deck as an "Impress" or honestly even from the Mac camp anyone who used "Keynote" by name. Seems like the MS terms are genericized to the point where trademark protection may be in peril.

    42. Re:New features? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Define "huge data consumers".
      There are small (in terms of employee size) companies which handle enormous amounts of data. Think a genome sequencing lab. It can have as little as 5 employees, but works with huge data and handles big sums of money. I can think of a few situations where a single person needs to handle very large datasets and handle enough money to justify an Oracle Database.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    43. Re: New features? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't say they're "undocumented". Oracle DB documentation is literally HUGE. In general, Oracle products documentation is so large, it starts caving into itself, for example OBIEE full documentation is 11 GB of text files.
      That's a pretty big issue: the answer definitely is in the documentation (except for very rare, very customized implementations) but you can't really find it. However, crowdsourcing helps. In this regard, I rarely look at documentation but ask lots of questions in the OTN forums, and other people either answer or at least send me on the right path.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    44. Re:New features? by webmistressrachel · · Score: 1

      It may be simple, but it works, and I can take my SQL (pardon the pun) anywhere from there.

      Don't underestimate simple, reliable data formats and methods. Look where all this commercially-driven proprietary crap, and the attitudes that have come with it which now prevail in other industries, I.e. software patents, waste, the environment is taking us...

      --
      This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
    45. Re:New features? by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

      Yes, but I'm talking about the corner cases where the SQL Server has completely trashed the database files due to some bug in the SQL Server, if you then have the dump as a number of INSERT statements in a text file you have a much higher chance of recovering the data, or atleast partial amounts of it.

      And yes I write this because I have seen MS SQL Server corrupt datafiles in this way before.

    46. Re:New features? by F.Ultra · · Score: 2

      Of course unless you use only InnoDB (which everyone does since it's the default for some years now) and use --single-transaction to do the dump via a transaction istead of locking the tables.

    47. Re:New features? by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

      So you believe that only the filesystem can corrupt the datafiles, I sense that you have never encountered that nice feeling when the MS SQL Server have corrupted the binary files so that restore is simply ignored due to "corrupt database". VSS won't rescue you there.

    48. Re:New features? by Gwala · · Score: 1

      --single-transaction is one of the 'tricks around this' - but it blows out the production databases memory use if the table is updated while the export is occurring. (e.g.someone does an update all for some insane reason)

      --
      #!/bin/csh cat $0
  3. Slashvertisement alert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Wow. What a blatant advertisement. Slashdot has really sunk.

  4. Nothing about price? by Njovich · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wait what. He wrote a review about Oracle, gave an 8 for value, and didn't mention pricing? Is this some kind of shill or such?

    Even for a shill I would at least expect a line like
    'Yes, a license for a normal octocore setup costs more than your home, but...'
    or 'After going through the 2 hour cost calculation matrix, the resulting price seemed a tad steep, but'

    1. Re:Nothing about price? by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      'Yes, a license for a normal octocore setup costs more than your home, but...'
      or 'After going through the 2 hour cost calculation matrix, the resulting price seemed a tad steep, but'

      but, but... but you don't realise, look at the title of TFA, it says: Finally, a true cloud database.

      Do you understand that? They finally have managed to install their database on an actual freaking CLOUD! How cool is that? I imagine it's pretty cool, maybe -50 Centigrade or so.

    2. Re:Nothing about price? by jimshatt · · Score: 5, Funny

      A true clown database. Clown storage and clown computing is all the rage these days.

    3. Re:Nothing about price? by F.Ultra · · Score: 2

      Yeah but is it web scale?

    4. Re:Nothing about price? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Price is pretty much the same - $25K per core for basic, $50K per core for enterprise, $75K for RAC. Things like containers are extra, so figure a typical 8 core at being only $.5M license (14% annual maintenance). Around here, that only buys a small house.

    5. Re:Nothing about price? by Mitchell314 · · Score: 1

      Yes, it works quite well with both spiders and silkworms. Though keep in mind that most arachnids and insects do not perform well uninsulated in the cloud layer due to the abnormal temperatures, turbulence, and humidity. To get the best query throughput, keep your servers and invertebrates in a controlled, pressurized environment.

      --
      I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
    6. Re:Nothing about price? by jbolden · · Score: 1

      That is kinda weird since DB2 has now used pricing as a strategy, "buy our hardware (Netezza) and get your DB2 licenses included". Which means AFAIK Oracle is now the most expensive product per CPU.

      In terms of value... Oracle saves people a lot of money on hardware and telco at the high end. There just isn't any easy way to do a value computation because their just aren't the right kinds of competitors.

    7. Re:Nothing about price? by hibiki_r · · Score: 1

      I guess that they are not expensive for what you get in the same way that a fighter jet is not expensive for what you get. Most people should just not buy one at all.

      It's amazing how many companies are there paying an arm and a leg for Oracle installs when the same work would work just fine in Postgres for $0.

    8. Re:Nothing about price? by denvergeek · · Score: 1

      I bet the compression is pretty good

    9. Re:Nothing about price? by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      It's not as fast as /dev/null. Does /dev/null support sharding yet?

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    10. Re:Nothing about price? by Bill+Dimm · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah but is it web scale?

      For those that don't know the joke, it is here.

    11. Re:Nothing about price? by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      But it only works if you pay premium for special large clown shoes, without those the thing tips over all the time (and that's how it got that clown nose, kept hitting the darn thing against the pavement).

    12. Re:Nothing about price? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      My old workplace (post anonymously to protect them) had a bit of fun with that. We had our main production machine licensed for Enterprise, but another machine licensed for Standard. Oracle decides to do an audit - I was working at a state agency, and they decided to audit the entire state government. We ran the scripts they sent us and sent back the output, believing that we'd done everything correctly.

      As it turned out, at some point, one of our DBAs had run the Oracle database tuner against the machine that was running the Standard version. You're not allowed to do that. Oracle said that we would have to upgrade the server running Standard to Enterprise, and back-license it for the previous five or six years - the time since we'd installed Oracle on that server. That was a significant chunk of money - it's been a few years now, but I believe it was in the neighborhood of $200K (after Oracle's offer of their usual incredibly steep 'discount' Hypothetically, we owed them over a million, at the list prices that no one actually pays). Certainly the state could afford it, but it was an unbudgeted expense, and someone would likely wind up on the chopping block for it.

      We dug deeper. We created a new database on the server running Standard, then tried to connect to it with the tuning application (which you install elsewhere, on a server running Oracle's management tools, not on the database server itself). We discovered that it did not give any warning that you are connecting to a server running Standard. Checking into the logs from Oracle's audit scripts, we also discovered that the tuner had been used against that server exactly once.

      So we talked to Oracle. We told them that one of our DBAs had innocently run the tuner against one database on there, once. We'd identified which DBA it was and given her additional training so that it would not happen again, and added to our procedures to let any future additions to the DBA staff know that they should not assume that the tool would let them know if it wasn't okay to use it on a particular database. We told them there was no malicious intent, and it was a simply mistake. We also mentioned to them the fact that their own tool didn't indicate anything about it not being allowed, and that they might want to fix that, since it would be simple for the tool to determine it.

      Their reply was essentially, "You touched it, you bought it. Pay up."

      We got our legal department involved, explaining the situation to them. One of our attorneys wrote a rather fun letter to Oracle, using the phrase "minefield marketing" - meaning basically that Oracle appeared to have deliberately set things up so that it would be likely for someone to accidentally do something they weren't supposed to, in order to make money by doing audits and then threatening people who made honest mistakes in order to get extra money.

      Again, their reply was simply, "You touched it, you bought it. Pay up."

      We offered as a compromise to pay them one year's licensing for the Enterprise version for that server, since there had only been the one incident. They replied that they would not accept that. License it all the way back (including a couple of years before the activity outside the license ever happened), or they would take us to court.

      Our legal department replied, "Okay. Take us to court, then. We'll have some very interesting things to tell a judge and jury about how your software is set up to entrap unwary users."

      I don't know what happened from there, since that's about the time that I left the company. The last I talked to anyone about it, about a year ago, it was just their lawyers and Oracle's lawyers talking, and the people in IT were being kept in the dark about it.

      Still, though, I found Oracle's attitude toward a company that had been a loyal customer for more than twenty years to be very hard to understand. We'd literally paid them somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-50 million in that time... but they w

    13. Re:Nothing about price? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      ...or you can spend $500 on Oracle instead.

      You don't have to buy the gold-plated-ultra edition if you don't really need it.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  5. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by ReallyEvilCanine · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's free for personal use (edelivery.oracle.com) just like all Oracle software. You only need paid licenses and support for commercial use. For that you need a lot of money.

  6. Really? by Viol8 · · Score: 1

    Well good luck getting MySQL or MariaDB to run 24/7 on a multi terrabyte database with 99.999% uptime including doing backups.

    1. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      A "terrabyte"? Is that a byte the size of the earth? So, Marvin's brain is 1 terrabyte? Hmm. Makes sense.

    2. Re:Really? by Viol8 · · Score: 1

      We managed it. Get yourself some new DBAs.

    3. Re:Really? by drummerboybac · · Score: 1

      Good luck getting Oracle to do the same on a 500TB database.

    4. Re:Really? by jbo5112 · · Score: 1

      Thanks, I already have a multi-terabyte MySQL install with better uptime than Oracle than the last Oracle cluster I dealt with.

      Facebook scales each node to multi-terabyte, and runs so many database servers that it would probably be cheaper to buy the company that licensing (~2 million cpu licenses aren't cheap). A year ago, Facebook was dealing with 2.5 billion content items shared, 2.7 billion likes, and 500+ TB new data ingested every day on their primary database (estimate about 15% higher now). Something else to add: Facebook's workload is 90% read and quite interlinked.

    5. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And that is true of other database software as well. If you are having uptime trouble, you can fix it by getting a good enough DBA who knows what they are doing, the question is just how hard is it find such a DBA. In my experience, you can end up getting a Oracle fanboy for a DBA, and all of a sudden the stability of non-Oracle databases goes to crap, and they blame it on the software. But then you get a MySQL or Postgres fanboy in, and the Oracle database starts degrading, while you have remarkable uptime on the other database.

    6. Re:Really? by abirdman · · Score: 1

      Ah, but the database is the soil. And it's Net Scale. And with Oracle, the price of your license depends on how much you intend to earn from said license. And they will audit you. And you will be forever version bound and platform bound and tied to one processor size, because to change any of those you need more licenses. Please read the license carefully, then Click here to install. And be sure to check out our special deal on the Ask search bar for your browser. Oh wait, we must update your java client. Click here to accept agreement, then click install. You may be required to restart your computer after installation. Java runs on 4 billion devices. Larry Ellison must pwns all!

      I don't know if Oracle is a state of mind or a social disease.

      --
      Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
    7. Re: Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Need an army, because perhaps you've decided to use the tool the wrong way.

      Happens a lot when people chose the solution before defining the problem.

  7. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nobody, not one single person is using Oracle databases in a personal capacity. It is always in connection with business. Therefore, I expect there to be a mention of pricing.

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  8. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by ledow · · Score: 1

    So if you're one guy who needs a database for himself that he doesn't need to expose to clients at all, it's only $200 a year.

    Sorry, but I can't imagine they have much take-up of that at all, except for testing / experiments / copyright infringement.

  9. Ah, terrabytes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...this earthy smell, I do like it!

  10. smooth RAC cluster installation by close_wait · · Score: 1

    "smooth RAC cluster installation". That would make a pleasant change.

  11. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by Vanderhoth · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, it's $200/year for a personal licence if you're going to use it commercially. If you're just creating a DB to categorize the porn on your PC and don't ever plan on making money or exposing it in a commercial sense it's free to use.

  12. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by ReallyEvilCanine · · Score: 1
    Sorry? Because you doubt the T&Cs right there on the site? As for the last line, you're not terribly imaginative, are you? The free access means anyone who wants to learn how to use any of Oracle's products to, say, get a job, can do so for free.

    Any company considering systems (Oracle sells hardware, OS, database, back end, middleware and front end) doesn't have to pay first and hope later. Developers can and do build full turnkey solutions at zero speculation cost. Try that with DB2 or MS Foxbase Pro. Try it with SAP (for that manner, try getting SAP to run on Flash.free Apple). Can you imagine it now? This is the same thing as Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk and the rest giving freebies to schools and deep-discounting for students.

  13. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by Vanderhoth · · Score: 2

    Oracle uses a tiered system for licensing and the prices are usually depended on what features you need for your business. I've installed and use Oracle DB for personal use. It was mostly a training excise, but I use it to keep track of my beer brewing recipes, cost of supplies, quality checks, temperature, specific gravity, alcohol by volume, taste, etc... I could have used MySQL, but I wanted to learn and practice with Oracle because that's the industry standard for large database applications.

    I'm not a shill promoting Oracle, MySQL and SQLServer are all great products. I haven't used MariaDB yet, but I like to play around with the technologies. Oracle is a great product if you have a need for large database applications. It's management are still a bunch of asshats; it sucks that business people get in the way of and ruin great technologies.

  14. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by FictionPimp · · Score: 1

    In education they like to send you a quote for a unreasonable amount of money with stupid discounts.

    I think our quote was a few million for the license with 98.5% discount.

  15. Re:Where's the Skip This Ad button? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Its right beside the dislike button.

  16. Bad link to VSS by benjymouse · · Score: 1

    The correct one:

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa384649(v=vs.85).aspx

    For a list of in-box (Windows' own internal VSS writers that ensure disk consistency) see here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb968827(v=vs.85).aspx

    Oracle is an external VSS writer. Has supported VSS for many years.

    --
    Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
  17. Think twice before using Oracle, then think again by JDG1980 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    99% of database users have no need at all to give money to One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

    Yes, there are a tiny handful of applications where Oracle outshines the alternatives. Yours probably isn't one of them. If you're running a small website, MySQL/MariaDB will almost certainly work just fine. (Or the free version of MS SQL Server, if you're developing in ASP.NET.) For larger applications, PostgreSQL can do the vast majority of what Oracle can do at no cost. If you're not working with absolutely massive datasets, and don't need the specific enterprise features the system offers, Oracle is probably a waste of your money.

    Too many companies throw their money away just because it's "standard", even though it really isn't – other databases are more widely used as well as being cheaper and easier to administer. Anyone who wants to buy Oracle should have to justify with clear and specific reasons (not just marketing buzzwords) why they need it and how the massive expense is going to benefit the company compared to the alternatives.

  18. Oracle also allows online restores by emil · · Score: 1

    The syntax is:

    alter database recover datafile '/path/to/restored/file.dat';

    alter datafile '/path/to/restored/file.dat' online;

    I used that on an Oracle 7 database about 2 months ago.

    1. Re:Oracle also allows online restores by fatp · · Score: 1

      You need to take the datafile offline first

  19. Specifically... by emil · · Score: 1

    A processor license for Oracle Enterprise database is $47,500.

    http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf

    Currently, this lets you run on a dual-core x86, or a single core RISC/Itanium. The SPARC Niagra line had some real discount wierdness, since they present 64 cores to the OS.

  20. Re:Think twice before using Oracle, then think aga by hyperfl0w · · Score: 1

    PostgreSQL can do the vast majority of what Oracle can do at no cost

    And PG year after year is much, MUCH easier to install,backup,and maintain.

  21. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by fatp · · Score: 1

    No, it's not free for personal use. It's free for single person development / prototype use.

    There is a personal edition for production use, pricing at USD460 + around 20% per year for support.

  22. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I am.... I have a 2 node RAC cluster running at home for fun. Only 1 app using right now, but it is for personal use.

  23. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by tjwhaynes · · Score: 1

    Developers can and do build full turnkey solutions at zero speculation cost. Try that with DB2 or MS Foxbase Pro.

    DB2 Express is free, to allow developers to experiment and build up solutions with zero cost. Last time I looked, it was also the most deployed commercial database solution in the Amazon EC2 cloud. From there, it's up to you whether you want to head down the High Availability routes via HADR or pureScale, or the shared-nothing infrastructure of DPF. Or stay with Express if it meets your needs.

    P.S. Standard disclaimer: I work for IBM

    --
    Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
  24. Re:Think twice before using Oracle, then think aga by Shados · · Score: 1

    People use Oracle because either they use something that depends on it (some other Oracle product, like their ERP, which has some value for certain high end segments of retail), or because they're extremely high end, where a support contract and the license cost is irrelevent compared to a very specific feature they need.

    Its niche, but its a big buck niche with enough customers to prevent Oracle from dying...

    Now there's all the medium sized companies that got suckered into using Oracle for no good reason. I feel for them.

  25. Re:If you have to ask, you can't afford it by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 1

    I could have used MySQL, but I wanted to learn and practice with Oracle because that's the industry standard for large database applications.

    QED.

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  26. Is that all it's worth? by donak · · Score: 1

    I read it as "Oracle Database : price 12 cents".
    You'd get two for a quarter and a penny change!

    --
    Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post ...