Re: Why is Oracle unaffordable?
- From: Guillermo Alan Bort <cicciuxdba@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2010 10:57:10 -0300
OP,
I think you are not expressing yourself clearly. What is "USER FRIENDLY"?
something that someone with no experience (or very little at that) can use?
like say Windows? a point-and-shoot camera? I guess that's one way of
looking at it. But if you are a professional photographer you will want a
camera that allows you to change the lenses, set the focus manually,
regulate the delay in the flash, have multiple flashes, remote triggering,
shutter and sensitivity settings, etc. Right now automated cameras are way
cheaper than professional cameras. It's the same with the database. If you
just want a place to dump data, then perhaps a well written SQLite code is
your answer, however if you want the flexibility that comes with Oracle,
then I guess you should pay for it.
Oracle's Licenses cost a lot of money, but I don't think they are
'expensive'. You are getting a very good product for what you pay and
developing a similar product in-house or overhauling an already existing
product (and I'm thinking only of Postgre here, the rest are far more
expensive) would certainly cost more than the Oracle License.
As to ease of administration, you have amazing tools out there (TOAD, for
instance) and Oracle provides an administration interface (that used to be
somewhat unstable but got better over the years) called Enterprise Manager
Database Control (or a centralized version for multiple databases called
Grid Control). The latest versions of EM are VERY complete and you can do
almost everything from there. Why would you need a GUI? Oracle 9i has a java
console... not exactly a GUI but close enough. That eventually evolved into
DBControl.
Now, DBAs... most managers and several developers don't really understand
the need for a DBA. I can tell you from experience, developers can make good
DBAs (i've met a couple over the yeras), but they usually don't. That's why
DB Consultants make so much money. When all goes to hell, managers call a
very expensive consultant to fix the problems that could have been averted
by having an in-house DBA or a remote DBA service.
All that being said, Oracle isn't and doesn't want to be targeted for
small companies. So, small companies should not even look at Oracle. There
are alternatives that can store data efficiently and are fully functional
RDBMS, some with no or very low licensing costs.
Anyway, you sound very frustrated when you wrote that e-mail and like you
were looking for people to tell you "you're right, Oracle sucks" but most of
us can put food in our tables (which we bought thanks to our high DBA pay)
thanks to Oracle being what it is... so we won't say that.
Oh, and this is where I get to rant... DBA Pays are NOT HIGH. Granted, we
live in a capitalist world so the people that make money are the sellers
(and owners), DBAs may have a slightly better pay than say developers, but
that's because for one thing there aren't as many DBAs as there are
developers (let's not get into Good vs Bad dba/developer) and a new
application being delayed for a few weeks because of a lazy or bad
programmer (except for software factories, but they have other ways to deal
with that) is not as expensive as having a production line stopped for two
days because the DB went down unexpectedly and the backups are done through
exports because the developer that configured the DB had absolutely no idea
that RMAN even existed (and this is a true story, yes)... By the way... do
you think that a DBA gets a bonus for the DB no crashing (which is to say,
for doing a good job) anywhere near what a salesman gets for making a sale?
Or a SAP basis for just... I don't know what they do.
Just as a side note, if you are developing a product for selling to other
companies, I think there is a developer license or something like that. You
should read the license agreement thoroughly or contact an Oracle rep.
cheers.
Alan.-
On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Michael McMullen <ganstadba@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> #2 is true, I took over the management of two db’s that unskilled users
> installed and managed themselves to the point the db was inoperable.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
> oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Stefan Knecht
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 09, 2010 7:42 AM
>
> *To:* passionate_programmer@xxxxxxxxxxx
> *Cc:* oracle-l-freelists
>
> *Subject:* Re: Why is Oracle unaffordable?
>
>
>
> There's 2 possible answers to that, from my personal opinion:
>
>
> 1) I think Oracle is *extremely* user friendly even if you're not using the
> GUI (see #2) , because if you know how to query the database the right way,
> it shows you soooooooo much information and detail about what's going on
> under the hood. It's not "click .. hmm nothing happens.. now what ?!" -
> that just doesn't happen (well.... :-) but you get the idea )
>
> 2) Oracle has had for many years, and still has, a GUI. It's called
> Database Control, or Grid Control.
>
>
>
>
>
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