The one job where I got to experience an Oracle database in action, back around ought four (allegedly one of the good periods for Oracle's db tech):
A) Performance was so terrible by default the DBAs were cops and had given up on real RDBMS performance tools such as indexes and keys (primary and foreign) and instead used a ton of arcane low level file management tools like Oracle was some sort of "build your own DB kit" and the out of the box one was terrible so they needed a bespoke hand built one
B) I was once in a CLI running some sort of very basic Select statement (no joins, because again, no keys; single table; maybe a couple of columns) and watched in horror as an entire Java-based debugger IDE not installed on my extremely locked down work machine launched, spun up, and dived deep, deep into a terrifying stacktrace comprising an awful mix of C++ and Java code. To this day I don't know how or why a Select statement (that worked the second time) crashed so hard into Oracle's own source code. It is possibly related to part A above, but I'm still not sure. I don't know why the debugger symbols much less actual source code from Oracle were even available when it did crash that hard. I did know at the time that actually debugging Oracle's code was very far above my pay grade and in addition to sending the debugger IDE they should have also attached a large check.
I think of that experience often when people tell me that Oracle actually has good tech. If it weren't obvious from how awful their tools are to use as a user (a different previous employer used Oracle's expensive time/attendance/payroll tools and those were the clunkiest, worst web apps to use), that brief, weird horror story of the Select statement in a CMD.EXE window REPL bringing up the wildest stack trace in a debugger that didn't exist on my machine will always leave me feeling doubtful about that.
Oh no, they have shoveled some shit in their day for sure. I mean their ERP, their enterprise java bean stuff. But their flagship database product was always quite good, especially if you had staff or consultants who really knew it.
