RE: Do you ask the question: How do I work with Oracle Support....?

  • From: "Goulet, Richard" <Richard.Goulet@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <robertgfreeman@xxxxxxxxx>, <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2011 11:12:40 -0400

Robert,
 
    You seem to have opened the proverbial "can of worms", and bravo for
doing so.
 
    OTS is one of those parts of Oracle that one has a love-hate
relationship with.  First off, I'm perplexed by the form that they ask
you to fill out.  I normally do what is asked to get a tar number & then
update it with much more relevant information, but for some reason most
analysts aren't capable of understanding what is going on.  Take iTAR
3-2833852791 for example. I'm using 11.1.0.7.4 as the database on both
sides of a datapump job that is run via the PL/SQL API instead of the
command line utility and that was very clearly explained in the tar, yet
the analyst asked for the expdp and impdp command lines and log files.
Humm, that's redundant.  Next even though I only highlight one
occurrence of the problem and included that it's rather random in nature
yet they ask for a description of the specified table???  We're get the
wrong number of rows imported for the given table, usually it reports 1
row when several thousand were actually imported.  Then for some unknown
reason some other analyst "reviews" the TAR and we start all over again
from the beginning, Bother.  OH, BTW, in this case the second analyst
was less than professional in his correspondence, and yes I know that
written correspondence is harder to work with than oral.  Thankfully the
original analyst is back on the job.
 
    On the other side of the fence is another analyst who actually
called me to verify that the issue had been fixed before he closed the
tar even though I had indicated so in the last update.  Wonderful
person, would that all OTS analysts were of that caliber.
 
    OH Yes, one last thing, it seems to be a mantra in OTS that if your
not on the most current patch set, that's what will fix the problem.
Thankfully Oracle has one of the best support sites I think.  99% of the
time a simple search with the error your seeing reveals the issue, just
the returned result set is not always as narrow as it could be.  But I
guess it's better to hand over more information than too little.
 

Dick Goulet 
Senior Oracle DBA/NA Team Leader 

 

________________________________

From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Robert Freeman
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 5:45 PM
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Do you ask the question: How do I work with Oracle Support....?


My new itch of late is Oracle support and trying to help customers work
effectively with Oracle support. I hear a lot of people complain about
support. Sometimes the complaints are valid but just as often I find
that people don't understand how to work the support organization. As a
result of these observations I thought I'd share a few tidbits over the
next few weeks for you to review and comment on. Note, I don't work for
the support organization and I'm well aware that people have had great
experiences and not so great experiences with support. I find though, in
general, the more you know how to work with the support organization,
the better the results you will get.

With that, today I'd suggest that you log into Metalink and review
Oracle Note 166650.1 for additional information about the My Oracle
Support Portal and Working Effectively with Oracle Support. This note
will give you a good over view of working with the Oracle support
organization. 

Also Oracle is starting a series of "Adviser Webcasts". The webcasts
will cover a number of topics over time to help you leverage Oracle
support and several key features found in the my Oracle Support portal.
The first of the webcasts include Certification searches for database
product certifications and the ORA-600/7445 troubleshooting tool. Please
take a look at note 1300014.1 for more information on these and future
webcast events.

I'm posting this over to my blog (see my siggy below) and I hope to find
the time to get my blog rolling again as time permits.

Cheers all!

Robert G. Freeman
Master Principal Consultant, Oracle Corporation, Oracle ACE
Author of various books on RMAN, New Features and this shorter signature
line.
Blog: http://robertgfreeman.blogspot.com


Note: THIS EMAIL IS NOT AN OFFICIAL ORACLE COMMUNICATION. It is just the
opinion of one Oracle employee. I can be wrong, have been wrong in the
past and will be wrong in the future. If your problem is a critical
production problem, you should always contact Oracle support for
assistance. Statements in this email in no way represent Oracle
Corporation or any subsidiaries and reflect only the opinion of the
author of this email.

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