RE: Why is Oracle unaffordable?

Just as quick addition to the licensing cost for small companies.
If you look at the cost for a standard edition one edition with named user 
licenses, then you see you would pay less then € 900 for 5 named users (the 
minimum number of NUP licenses). I don't think this is expensive for enterprise 
software.

Of course, when you want a 5 node cluster replicating to another 5 node 
cluster, the cost is a little bit higher.



Freek D'Hooge
Uptime
Oracle Database Administrator
email: freek.dhooge@xxxxxxxxx
tel +32(0)3 451 23 82
http://www.uptime.be
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From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf 
Of Guillermo Alan Bort [cicciuxdba@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 09 November 2010 14:57
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Why is Oracle unaffordable?


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.--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

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