Re: Oracle's relationships with expert DBAs (and the rest of us mere mortals)

Personally, while lately Oracle does seem 'buggier' than in the good ole days, I still like working with it, and interacting with the Oracle community. The software seems 'buggier' and more difficult to maintain since they made the 'java' switch, making their distributions easier, but our maintenance more difficult. Though in all fairness, the old hard-coded binaries for each platform wasn't bug-free either. I remember one of my biggest headaches was upgrading from ver. 6 to ver. 7, since we were using Pro*FORTRAN. None of our programs would re-compile under ver. 7, and after some research it turned out to be the exact bug that shipped with the original ver. 6 release (and subsequently patched). So instead of shipping the patched version of Pro*FORTRAN, v6.xxx, they renamed the original unpatched v6 and shipped that.

Mladen's posts are usually full of good information or good for a laugh, depending on his mood. The quick response to questions here on this are great and full of good suggestions.

The OTN discussion forums are really good as well, quick, helpful responses. I'm kind of a one man office where I'm at, and I really miss the interaction with other Oracle folks that I used to have (downsizing sucks). Being able to just wander down the hall and toss around ideas with other Oracle folks is something I really miss, though these other 'avenues of discussion' almost fill the void.

The Oracle community is pretty good at discussing problems and coming up with fixes or workarounds, a lot better usually than Metalink seems to be the last few years. I've worked with other software that didn't have the 'community' behind it, and needless to say I don't work with those other software's anymore.

Just my opinion.

                               Bill Ferguson
            U.S. Geological Survey - Minerals Information Team
                           PO Box 25046, MS-750
                           Denver Federal Center
                          Denver, Colorado 80225
           Voice (303)236-8747 ext. 321     Fax   (303)236-4208
      ~ Think on a grand scale, start to implement on a small scale ~

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