Monday, September 10, 2007

Inexcusable Response

Back in April I filed a TAR on an ORA-00904 error I was getting when I called dbms_stats.gather_index_stats() in 9.2.0.8:
SQL> exec  dbms_stats.gather_index_stats('SCOTT','TIGER_CK');
BEGIN dbms_stats.gather_index_stats('SCOTT','TIGER_CK'); END;

*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00904: : invalid identifier
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_STATS", line 8557
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_STATS", line 8577
ORA-06512: at line 1


No problem, I already figured out that if I used ANALYZE TABLE I could work around the error. After about 3 weeks of traces and going back and forth, Oracle acknowledge it was bug 3078144 and was fixed on 10.2.

I requested a backport to my version. After all, I was on a supported version so I figured it wouldn't even be an issue. While I was planning on going to 10.2 eventually, it wasn't in the immediate plans. After the first month, I pinged support to see where my backport was.

"Oh, development denied it because it is a Level 3 SR."

Hmm, that's the game we're playing, eh?

"Well, it's happening every day now and affecting my business", I replied. OK, maybe a little fib, but lets see where it goes.

We agreed to raise it to a Level 2 SR.

Another month went by so I followed up again. Still with development. At this point we started planning the migration to 10.2 (not because of this TAR, but we are gluttons for punishment). It would be a race to see if I got my bug fix or my db upgraded to 10.2 first.

About two weeks ago, I decided to ratchet up the pressure; I "duty managed" the TAR. I got the nicest duty manager who knew how to talk the talk, but I wasn't buyin' what he was sellin'.

"I will give you a call within three business days to let you know the status of the bug fix." was his final reply. A week went by with no update.

Well, this past weekend I won - the database was upgraded to 10.2.0.3+. While I was tempted to keep the TAR open just to see how long it took to resolve, I decided honor was the better part of valor and closed the tar indicating we had upgraded.

I bet I don't get a satisfaction survey on this one.

6 comments:

Noons said...

Jeff, welcome to the hell that has been my dba existence for the last 7 years.

The number of bugs that just got the roughshod "upgrade or else" treatment is just staggering.

Worse: in many cases, upgrading did NOT fix the bugs and/or caused even more to show up.

It is in this ewnvironment that us, the real Oracle advocates, have to operate.

And when we complain loud and clear, all we get is "cynical", "who do you think you are" and other niceties from the crap that is Oracle management and marketing nowadays.

Any wonder?

Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff,

I had also simmilar problems as you. I couldn't upgrade the database from 9i to 10g, because of some bug and I waited more then 4 months on that bug to be fixed.

I don't need to explain, what I experienced with Oracle Supporters...

Patrick said...

I give anything to see the results (online) of those surveys. I just finished blasting them on a SR..goodness..

Anonymous said...

I bet I don't get a satisfaction survey on this one.

I've taken to writing in "How about sending me surveys for SRs that take longer than half a business day to resolve?" in the "Please tell us how we can improve our service" sections of the surveys.

No joy so far. Most of my surveys still come from SRs I open for passwords to locked patches. ;-)

Jeff Hunter said...

noons said...
Worse: in many cases, upgrading did NOT fix the bugs and/or caused even more to show up.

most definitely. 10gR2 is probably the buggiest release in my environment since 8.1.5.0.

I stopped responding to the TAR Surveys a couple years ago. For a while I was giving my honest opinion until I realized that if anybody is even looking at these things, they certainly don't care what I think, otherwise I wouldn't have a TAR out there for 4.5 months.

Anonymous said...

You will definitely get the survey. They nicely include the language that let's you know that ( possibly ) some negative impact will be made to the salary of some poor support person.

It would be much better if they adjusted the pay of the oracle management team based on how one responsed to a survey eh?