Back from a productive day at a customer site, I realized that there’s something I do to increase my productivity that it seems many other Oracle professionals don’t do consistently. It’s not that I’m trying to keep this secret - as a matter of fact, I preach it wherever I can - but it’s still not widely practiced. Here’s the tip:
Make use of Oracle Support
Yes, it’s really that simple. But for some reason, many people can still spend days googling error messages and surfing forums without contacting Oracle Support. And when they eventually give up, they’ll vent their frustration by posting on this or that forum that a specific feature is a piece of crap. I know the feeling - back in the Oracle Web Server 3.0 days, I got into a useless shouting match with Oracle Switzerland instead of working with Oracle Support.
Your customer or employer is paying both you and Oracle Support - so it makes sense for you and Oracle Support to work in parallel on any issues you might encounter. It will take you a bit of time to explain the problem clearly to Oracle Support and maybe build a simple test case - but that time is well spent. It’s a classical problem-solving trick to explain the problem to someone else - I’ve closed many Service Requests myself, because the act of defining the problem led me to consider something I had previously overlooked.
So next time you’re feeling stuck on a technical issue, remember that opening a Service Request is not a sign of weakness - it’s the mark of the professional.
