Oracle don’t “get” the web
March 8, 2011 10 Comments
And I’m talking about Web 1.0.
There have been lots of complaints about Metalink / My Oracle Support and its usability, etc. I don’t want to get into that.
But, for anyone who has ever linked to an Oracle whitepaper, etc, you will find most of these links no longer work – be it Statspack resources, Parallel Execution Whitepapers, etc. At least the main documentation links are stable.
But, for example, this self-explanatory URL:
is now redundant and should be
The Statspack paper by Connie Green has moved at least twice, who knows where it is now.
These don’t work:
- http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/performance/statspack-opm4-134117.pdf
- http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/performance/statspack-129989.pdf
- http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/performance/pdf/statspack_opm4.pdf
Same with Graham Wood’s ASH presentation which was here for a brief while:
The list goes on.
Even the Oracle website search still returns redundant links when looking for these papers and their other internal articles which refer to these moved resources obviously do not end up at the intended destination – is some sort of redirection capability beyond them?
I’ve lost count of the number of links to Oracle in blog articles out there, including my own, that now end up at an Oracle 404.
For as long as I can remember, their own internal website implementations have always been a terrible advert for their technology.
What do they think, that people don’t link to stuff? Stop moving the bloody things around.
OraStory 
It is a ‘filesystem’ mentality rather than, dare I say it, a ‘database’ mentality. A database mentality would give each document an identifier (and, in some cases, a version). And the URL would be a request for a document with that identifier (and version). Very RESTful.
Give me the resource, any version!!!!! 🙂
Narh, can’t have that! It’d mean all those new folks at Oracle whose only job is the “feel good” and “group hug” type of work would actually be out of a job. That”s not possible, it is not conducive to good empire building!
It’s typical of the “message not meaning” trends of corporate life.
Is its functionality compromised?
Who cares – look how shiny it is! Ooohhh.
That Connie Green paper is back now, here:
Click to access statspack-opm4-134117.pdf
From the language in your post it appears you are mellowing with age Dom!
I try not to swear on “paper”. “Bloody” doesn’t count.
Well said – it’s a proper pain in the a***, and it’s also sheer lazy that they don’t at least set up some redirects.
If I blogged in English, this would be an article I’d have written as well. Some swearing (probably ***ed out) included. 😉
Yes, it is a huuuge pain in the behind and looks like a miserable failure for a company that once claimed to “power the internet”. All those links in all those Oracle-related blogs (and also the links in my company’s wiki) rendered useless. Shame, shame, shame.
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