Oracle is user unfriendly

I'm getting pissed a bit by the Oracle. It's not the DB itself but everything around it. For over 1 week I'm trying to set up an VM with Oracle DB installed. At first I have installed Oracle VM Virtualbox manager. Then I tried to find an image that would be working out-of-the-box. On the Oracle page you can find many different VM templates... with strange names not telling much. There are images working only... if you are using 64-bit OS with hardware virtualization support. User interface on the Oracle page is... rough at best. "Search" function is returning many unrelated posts. Web page is a set of panels with sets of buttons, lists and plenty of controls. You would never know what's for. It is overloaded with controls. Once I tried to report a bug to Oracle. Their technician requested a testcase to be created using their procedures. What's funny is that their procedures are buggy and he requested other methods to be used. So I tried another one... and another... There was another way... simple and supported by them... at least according to the documentation. Unfortunately, it is too challenging to report bugs to Oracle so I had to find a workaround and just accept the bug. The bug is related to WITH statement in which UNION ALL is used. The projections are likely to get materialized and CBO is unable to push predicate into it. To find it out I had to use traces (or so called events to be enabled). Within >100MB text file I've located the portion where CBO should attempt to push predicate but... it wasn't even trying. So my experience with Oracle for today is as it follows:

• DB engine is quite nice and powerful. But you need to know its weirdness and how to deal with it.
• DB documentation is quite readable and complete. Unfortunately the new features are lacking documentation.
• Web pages are slow, not intuitive, overloaded and often asking for login information (which cannot be stored within the browser unless you use some trick).
• Licensing is terrible. It costs a lot and there are free alternatives which are getting better and better.
• Performance is controlled by some kind of artificial intelligence called CBO... which is quite buggy. Usually it works well under the condition that DB was designed by an experienced person. Unfortunately, the DB's are usually designed by people without much knowledge and companies are crying at some points due to performance issues.
• Their support sux.
• Nice thing about Oracle: The more you work with it, the more you are worth. Experience is very valuable here.

[EN] Why Poland is a sick country... obligation to register

A long time ago, when in Poland was there was socialism (as it never got to communism), people were obliged to register. That is every citizen had to have an address "where it was allocated by the government". It was not allowed to travel without an official permission. Whenever you moved into a new place for 3 days or more, you had to report this. That way the companion government could track you.

Nowadays... that is still the case.

Well... in fact similar restrictions existed in Poland for centuries.

What does it mean for citizens of Poland nowadays?

Whenever you travel to place which is not your currently registered place of living... you need to register.

There are 2 types of registrations. First is the temporary registration (ex. when you travel to some place for 3 days or more but less than 3 months). Second is a permanent residence place registration.

The second one is written in every official document you might have. Every time it changes... you need to take at least one day off (polish bureaucracy is a difficult one), go into one place, report where you are going to stay (you need the person who has rights to the residence place to be there... personally), then go to another place to change your identity card... but that's only the beginning. And you need to provide your current photos. Every document that has the data being changed... every single one needs to be changed. It is usually not free. In case if you have a car - you need to change your vehicle registration document (it costs), vehicle card and your driver license. Total cost (excluding the cost of current photos): ~5.3% of the median monthly salary. It means that if you are an average person and you would like to relocate 4 times a year... it would consume ~2% of your salary (or more) and you need to take 8 days of (as you need to do the formal things personally filling the papers, etc. and then pick up the documents).

What has changed? Since 2013 it is no longer a crime (yes - you would go to the prison... would they torture you?) in Poland if you won't register. So nowadays you would just be doing everything against the law - probably getting some fine.

But wait. That is not all. There is a law saying that I can send a official document to your registered address and it is considered as delivered if I did it twice. Even if the address was incorrect (that is if I would deliberately use your old registration address... or even an registration address of anyone else). Not enough? Seems so. As there are known issues (it is quite often situation by the way) where some debtors had no money to pay their debts and another person was robbed. Why? Because they had same name or surname or age or similar address or... And the bailiff might rob you without any consequences. You want to get your money back? Then you need to prove that the money were yours, that the debt is not yours, that it was illegal to take the money from you... and then you can politely ask for refund of the money. Of course there is an issue who should return the money... but there is possibly some small chance that someone would agree to give the money back to you. And what would you tell to the fact that our governments is going to increase the rights of bailiffs in Poland?

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Luckily for me, I had no incidents involving bailiffs yet. However I had gone through the process of changing my documents.