Up and Down Like an Up and Downy Thing
January 12, 2010 8 Comments
I am totally fed up with the poor performance and lack of availability of the Oracle Documentation.
It’s been like this for weeks.
Never a good advert for a technology company.
The upgrade and subsequent performance of Metalink/Oracle Support got a lot of press but this hasn’t.
Maybe that’s due to the vast array of good alternatives like Morgan’s library, Oracle-base, etc.
But damn it bugs me.
OraStory 
Maybe because most DBAs have a copy of Oracle documentation of all relevant versions on their harddrive?
Hi.
I downloaded the documentation zip and use that in preference to the net now. The search still requires the net, but for many issues I know where to look anyway so the search is not big loss. If I do need it I find the reference, then switch to my offline docs.
Even if you don’t like using the offline version, it’s good to have around as a backup. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Also due to the fact that you can download the whole documentation set to your PC and browse it there.
I know it is not best option because of not getting corrections on the docs and it is not the point you want to make with the post but having local copy of the documentation and using masters index instead of search option has been working for me for since I decided to move to Oracle. I think old habit of having local MSSQL books online 🙂
Hmm – am I hearing a theme there?
Obviously I’m just daft for resisting downloading it 🙂
It’s more of an issue when trying to point other people to the correct reference on the forums etc.
As long as you know the root like
10.2
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/
11.1.
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01
It is a bit hard but still doable. Thats what I do when I answer questions with reference.
and it is very nice because if the page cannot be found this means that part of the doc is updated
Yes but we’re getting away from the point which is is it too much to expect the online documentation to be reliably up and accessible? Oracle have always been cr4p at websites. That might have been acceptable twelve years ago when they were really just a DB company.
After continuing MOS fiasco and http://www.oracle.com design with worst ever navigation, I lost my hope from Oracle and I started not to expect more.