Oracle

[Hebdenlad]

Just wondering how many edugeek users run Oracle in their environments. I'm guessing that there won't be many due to the Stella Artios pricing model that Oracle attracts but it would be useful to know...

 

Oh, and a happy new year and all that sort of thing.

 

Regards,

 

Phil

[LosOjos]

I don't use Oracle in my current role, but in a previous job we used it. Nightmare of a system to get any kind of usable data out of...

[localzuk]

Not here - nothing supports or needs it in my experience of education software (well, at a secondary level anyway). Everything uses MSSQL or Access databases (shudder).

 

I think it is likely a little too 'big' for schools to need.

[pete]

Used to use it in the days of "patches?, we don't need no stinking patches".

 

*twitch*

 

We occasionally get an Oracle salesperson phone up and try to convince us it's not very expensive at all now....but they tend to clear off when we point out it doesn't work with any of the major MIS and Microsoft pricing for schools is even cheaper if we can't use Postgres or MySQL.

[Soulfish]

I'm another person who doesn't see any need for it in Secondary schools. Everything we use either works with MySQL/Postgresql/MS SQL or an access database. I don't think we have any software that's compatible either

[Duke]

Same as everyone else, no need for it in our kind of environment, DBs are handled by mainly MySQL or MSSQL here and we have no software that either requires or supports Oracle DBs. Happy New Year though!

[LosOjos]

@Hebdenlad:

 

out of curiosity, how are you finding Oracle in an educational environment? I used it in a financial role and it was so buggy it was untrue, it actually caused quite a major financial upset in my last place...

[pauljonze]

I worked with Oracle 10g and 11g in my previous job in Further Education where it provided the backend database for the college MIS. Oracle DBA support was provided by the MIS system supplier, but I found it fine to work with in my role.

 

Using ODBC and SQL dynamic pass-through scripts in MS Access I was able to produce a suite of bespoke reports on the live data. As long as the underlying db is of sound structure (i.e. conforms to relational db rules etc) it's as easy to work with as any other relational db.

 

I absolutely agree that it would be severe overkill in a school environment though! Unless you have masses of data and can afford Oracle DBA salaries you're better off with the common-or-garden MS stuff and MySQL.

[Domino]

Its the back end of a lot of our products, but then I'm not in education anymore.

 

Its server overkill for 99% of schools, and licences are a bit of a nightmare....

[K.C.Leblanc]

Nope, it's not even to do with the pricing in our case. Most of the database backed applications we use (and for me the main one is Sims) expect MSSQL.