The Autonomous Database Prophesy of Doooooom

I predict the new autonomous database will run fine on small data sets, but when you get in the terabyte range it will be terrible. The reason that it will perform poorly is that it will take forever (and it does) to run statistics. They will have to get a good Oracle DBA (dying breed) to get a diagnosis of what is wrong.

He will figure out the statistics job is the problem, because it takes to long to gather statistics on terabytes of data.

I predict that after the DBA does his handy work, the ML will make bad decisions on tuning because the database statistics used by the oracle cost based optimizer are stale. The stats will be stale because it takes too long to run them and the DBA made a work around. Performance will be dog slow.

When asked why the stats are stale... they will find out the DBA began exporting and importing stats to improve performance. They will blame the DBA and fire him. Then they the customer will complain. Oracle will go back to square one. A new stats ML package patch will come out.

Then machine learning will pick the best way to manage stats collection. It will realize that the stats take to long and then begin experimenting with alternatives. It may auto partition and select plan base lines that it loads and unloads depending on the data. With in a few days it will become so convoluted that no human can figure out what is going on.

The database will eventually flat-line and have to be rebuilt from scratch. A good old DBA will rebuild the database and turn ML off and... the new autonomous database will go quietly the way of the tuning adviser package...

But the cost of the new DBA will be higher than ever before. You will need skills as an oracle DBA, a storage expert, a cloud expert, an exadata expert and this same guy will have to know machine learning.

Looking at the cost of the unmitigated disatser running on the Oracle cloud and the ludicrous expense of the Oracle DBA... everyone will quickly get off Oracle at an accelerated rate.

You have read the prophesy December 22 2017

http://www.businessinsider.com/oracles-autonomous-database-coming-in-january-aims-to-crush-amazon-2017-12

Easy prophesy... when history tends to repeat itself ...

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/enterprise-manager/tuning-pack-11g-ds-068467.pdf

Oracle Tuning Pack, an add-on pack for management of Oracle Database 11g, offers an extremely cost effective and easy-to-use solution that automates the entire application tuning process. Enhancement of SQL performance is achieved through real-time monitoring and SQL Advisors that are seamlessly integrated with the Enterprise Manager, and together provide a comprehensive solution for automating the complex and time-consuming task of application tuning.

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It's all crap. Everything built at Oracle is all crap and always will be. The reality is that even in the DB group, the people there are not great developers anymore. The great developers are gone, replaced by people who were acquired and don't think they can get a job anywhere else.

Oracle can't attract good talent anymore and they don't try to. They assimilate people from other companies... the good people leave... the mediocre people stay.

Other areas, like TK's org are a complete joke. They can't even maintain what technology is acquired. Many of them are deathly afraid of being laid off and not being able to find another job. So, they attack other employees and fight for every little bit of fake glory they can get so they can say they are better than so-and-so. Oracle is just a repository for left-over people.

I am sure the autonomous database is just expensive smoke and mirrors.

Sounds like there will be a new space opening up for some high-priced consultants, experts needed for the "autonomous database".

Guaranteed to be a disaster, at least for the customers. But, if they (Oracle) spin it right, they might make a lot of money off the clueless before they get a clue and do something else. Things seem to work that way in IT.

“You will need skills as an oracle DBA, a storage expert, a cloud expert, an exadata expert and this same guy will have to know machine learning.“

Just about every it job is like this now. You need to have a more than basic understanding of much more than you expect. It is a natural extension of the complexity of tech that never ends.

@QRYxWSZ-vwi Oracle lays people off when its healthy, what will it do when it starts really losing revenue? What will it do when the autonomous database craters? Hire more? Or scale down with revenue? The autonomous DB will probably create a new round of layoffs.

Won’t this be the equivalent of Oracl Unbreakable Linux? There will be issues in the first few interactions but it’s a case of repeatedly resolving those issues to make it fully autonomous. This could start a database arms race.

Right on! Oracle developing things that requires deep statistics knowledge and excellent ML knowledge is a disaster 100% certain to happen. Sit back, warm up the popcorn and watch this disaster unfold in slow motion. Enjoy! Happy holidays!

Boring....I thought this was a layoff board

Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

The Autonomous Database Prophesy of Doooooom

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