Oracle propoganda
August 29, 2006Sat thru an hour-long Web/audio presentation this morning from some folks who work for Oracle’s support organization. The idea being that we pay a lot for Oracle support and should learn how to maximize that dollar that we spend.
It was actually quite interesting, covered mostly their Metalink system. You have to be a paying customer to gain full access to Metalink, and we definitely pay our fair share to Oracle. But I will say that there’s a wealth of tools and FAQ’s and knowledge base stuff once you log into Metalink.
Unfortunately during our demo the site went down so we weren’t able to see some of the features in action. But what we did see was pretty cool, like an upgrade tool for some of the Oracle Enterprise Applications (HR, Payroll, etc.) that makes it a fairly straightforward series of tasks you can step thru. And the tool keeps track of which tasks have been completed so you know the status of your upgrade at a glance.
I only wish they had similar support tools for their standalone middleware installs like Oracle Portal. We put in a request, which the guy promised to give to the development teams. You know what that means–eventually they might come up with something that kinda meets your needs, but it won’t arrive until years after you really needed it.