Friends don't let friends use Oracle

01.Blogs :

Friends don't let friends use Oracle

Before I go on to bash Oracle, I will admit feature wise, it's the best database, but Oracle has made their product in a way to specifically steal/extort as much money out of your company as possible. I will also admit that while SQL Server 2000 is really good, if you're doing high end DB work, Oracle is superior for their features as Microsoft won't have an equally functioning product until SQL Server 2005. You hear that Oracle, time to cut your sales back to locked in users who were stupid enough to coner themselves into your scam.

Oracle has to be the most evil, greedy and slimey company in the IT world. As a warm up I'll first mention the Oracle scandall of 2002 where they tricked California state gov to purchase so more user liceneses of Oracle than they had employees. And somehow I doubt every employee was going to be using Oracle. For those who missed this scandal you can start looking here.

But that's not the fueling reason of my post, I wanted to expose the ways Oracle forces you to give them every dollar possible. For starters, Oracle has intentionally create ABSOLUTELY NO GUI TO MANAGE THEIR PRODUCT. It's 2005 people, not 1985, GUI has been king (even in the unix world) for a decade and Oracle still has no GUI to manage your setup or database. While I learned DB management via a console, only would actually prefer a console for their DB management. If for no other reason, it's so much faster to create & see relations via a GUI. With a lack of a proper GUI Oracle actually kills 2 birds with one stone as now people don't have to expect a Help button anywhere, so don't expect any proper or usable online documentation, how convienant.

Secondly, Oracle tries to gain PR from the *NIX zealots by releasing a version for Red Hat. Ok thats cool, way to go Oracle until you find out you HAVE TO PURCHASE RED HAT ENTERPRISE TO USE ORACLE FOR LINUX. Wtf, wait, so I can't install the free linux (which is the same damn OS btw) I have to purchase Red Hat's OS, and oh, it costs as much as Windows Server. Ok, so where's the free part here, oh yeah, there is none. Talk about a buddy system.

Now it gets better, let's say you are lucky enough to get the hundreds of dollars for Red Hat enterprise and then the god awfull thousands of thousand of dollars for Oracle, maybe tens of thousands of dollars, depending how Oracle wants to nit pick your server details, now guess what, YOU CANNOT INSTALL ORACLE WITHOUT HIRING AN ORACLE CONSULTANT for $300/hr. Why you might ask, can't any IT person, even a dumb one, install Oracle, even if incorrectly it can still be installed and ran, why no. Oracle doesn't provide a proper install wizard, and YOU MUST SET EVERY ORACLE OPTION DURING INSTALLATION, AND NO DEFAULTS ARE PROVIDED. This is totally intentional as it's not good enough to rip you off for $10k, now you have to hire one of Oracle's $300/hr employees to install it for you, say what!?

So finally, any decent IT product now-a-days needs little to no maintenance. Now-a-days the worst you have to do is clean up a temp directory and even that I can't recall having to do anywhere anymore. The concept of software maintance has pretty much vanished because programmers have put self maintance into their software. Seems like a basic idea, if you create junk files, it's your responsibility (aka the program's) to clean up after itself. So while pretty much every MS product can be installed and forgotten about, assuming it's being used in a reasonable way, then why does Oracle insist on a yearly "health checkup" for your Oracle server. And oh yea, don't forget that $300/hr pricetag for your health checkup. Sh!t, doctors don't even do that much and at least they have a REAL purpose in life, where as an Oracle consultant exists as a slimey sneaky way to steal your company's money.

Finally... uou know Oracle might oneday prove me wrong, maybe in an upcoming release they'll have an installer that even a very well educated IT employee could use, maybe oneday an average IT employee could use, it will contain help, and wizards and defaults. And then they could even provide a GUI to manage your DB. Then I'll actually admit Oracle is a decent provide, heck, maybe better than MS SQL Server, but somehow I doubt Oracle will ever do this. Now they have vendor lock in with so many companies because it often appears cheaper to stay with a product than to migrate to a more reasonable vendor. IBM has achieved this dominance in the market for the very same reason, not because their products are superior, heck, even good, but because companies are still using servers based on 25yr old technology (hello AS400, you've made IBM rich).

Finally I'd like to point out Oracle's newest plan of taking advantage of Intel's newer cpus by finding a way to charge you almost DOUBLE BECAUSE YOU HAVE A CUTTING EDGE CPU. That's right, the world is moving to dual core cpus. Now while real world benchmarks prove that dual core do not perform anywhere close to double the speed of a single core cpu, actually somewhere around 10%-20% faster, Oracle has decided a dual core CPU is the same thing as having dual processors. Sneaky sneaky.

I have more to say but I'm in such a hatefull fury I can't recall it all. As for any future commenters on this post, you can shove your $1,500 Oracle GUI manager up your arse as there is competition that provide a near equally good database with a GUI and don't cost much more than the 3rd party GUI tools.

UPDATE 5/16/05: Tsk tsk naughty Oracle, it seems they just settled for $8m in a Whistleblower suit where a government employee lost his job while blowing the whistle on an Oracle/Government scandall.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/16/oracle_settles/

posted on Monday, May 16, 2005 2:31 PM by travisowens

# @ Sunday, May 15, 2005 12:32 AM

I am glad I'm using SQL Server. I often found is difficult to appreciate why the UNIX/Linux folks enjoy giving themselves such a hard time configuring machines. Maybe they relish the old days of I-got-IT-Power or IT-for-the-elite only.

Bernard

# @ Sunday, May 15, 2005 4:20 AM

Not to mention that installing Oracle on a developer machine is tantamount to sentencing it to death; the hulk of a DBMS will drop your available memory to zero and slow down your system to a crawl. SQL Server 2005 runs perfectly fine on a developer machine, even when you open up Management Studio. Long live SQL Server!

punzki

# @ Monday, May 16, 2005 2:42 AM

Bernard, Being an ex-Solaris I feel a have a little insight into the whole Unix zealot world. While I love the power of the command line (but I don't use DOS because it's a poor escuse for a command line, although after one installs the x86 ports of all the common Unix commands it's not so bad) but the simple fact that people stick with what they know. Generally people don't like change. One thing that really confirms this is the fact that older (meaning 40s and above) often only know legacy technology and will fight for them very viciously. They've become comfortable with their limitations, and often feel empowered by the simpliciy/power one has over a system they have had years of experience with. Unfortunetly this is why I am often biased against older IT employees because 95% of the time, this is where they are stuck. If you give them SQL Server they would still make a database using all free-text fields because they don't see the point of limiting yourself to simply INT or what not. Although 2000, XP and Longhorn are going to have all the beauty of a UI and all the power of a unix command line as Monad (aka MSH) is coming out and is suppose to work on any Windows OS that can run .Net 2.0. I have used the beta of Monad and can say it's a VERY impressive command line. In fact as an ex-Unix person, Monad is lightyears ahead of a unix command line, but I guess that will have to be proven. You can read more about Monad at: http://weblogs.asp.net/ssadasivuni/archive/2004/07/06/173628.aspx

travisowens

03.UPDATE CALENDAR :

04.CATEGORIES :

06.Archives :

07.Subscriptions :