Database Product Evaluation Criteria

Questions to ask when evaluating new systems/ products that needs to run in an Oracle environment:

External Environment

• What hardware platforms are supported by the solution?
• What operating systems (with versions) are supported by the solution?
• Describe network and protocol connectivity requirements.

Oracle Software

• What exact Oracle database version(s) is required?
• What other Oracle software components (with versions) are required?
• Is your company licensed to use all the software components in the proposal?
• Are these products still supported by Oracle?
• When will these product versions be desupported by Oracle? (life cycle)

Database

• How many databases are required?
• How large will these databases be?
• How rapidly will these databases grow?
• Any specific database parameters that should be used?

Backups

• What are the backup and recovery requirements for these databases?
• Will backups be taken on-line or off-line?
• Will these databases run in archivelog or noarchivelog mode?
• Any proposed backup schedules (daily/ weekly/ monthly backups)?
• When/ how large is the backup window?

Workload

• Who will access the system/ database and why?
• How many concurrent users will use the system?
• How many transactions will be processed (TPM)?
• Will the workload be mainly on-line or batch? Give details.
• Is the application mainly read or write intensive?
• How will the users access the system/ databases?

Service Level Agreements (SLA)

• What SLAs need to be put in place to support the solution, and with whom?
• What will the impact be if a database is unavailable?
• What will the impact be if the application is unavailable?

Disaster Recovery (DRP)/ Business Continuance Plans (BCP)

• What DRP plans need to be put in place to support the solution?
• What BCP plans need to be put in place to support the solution?

Security

• How can the database environment be made secured?
• Will anyone (except the DBAs) require DBA accounts on the database?

Maintenance

• What maintenance actions will be required to keep the proposed solution available?

Personnel/ Training

• How many DBAs would be required to look after these databases?
• How experienced do these DBAs need to be?
• What special training would be required to install and maintain these databases?
• Are all relevant courses readily available locally?