2 Dec
9 reasons why the new Metalink sucks
I know I’m not alone, and I know I’m not the first to express displeasure, but let me just say:
AAAARRRRRRRGHHHH!!!!!
I’m going to call the new Metalink “Metaflash.” Seems like a good name for it. It combines “meta” and “flash” which sounds really hip and technical, yet communicates nothing. Kind of like shoving “i” or “e” in front of a product name so we unwashed legions of IT morons will know the e/i-product works with the Internet, or attaching every imaginable adjective to“grid” and “cloud” until we’re all ready to heave our lunch onto our keyboards.
But back to why Metaflash sucks:
- It’s costing my customers money and my team time. Every time I have to sit and wait for that stupid wheel to spin and spin – spewing all the benefits of Metaflash at me because I really do need to be reminded – only to realize I’m caught in a flash loop, I get nothing done. I guess I could catch up on other things while my customer waits for an answer or a patch.
- Can anyone find anything in the Metaflash version of Certify? As far as I can tell, nothing is certified with anything anymore, because all I get are blank pages. I know, I know, I haven’t taken the training. Whatever that means. I’m sure the UI folks at Amazon make the same excuse to Jeff Bezos when some untested pile of “code” turns the online buying experience into 12th century dental surgery. Stupid customers.
- Why, oh why is my FTP site gone for downloading patches?? Don’t give me that wget crap, either; did anyone at Oracle try to right-click on the “download” button using Safari? The link doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. Even if it did, with wget, I’d be spraying my Metaflash username and password all over the command line for anyone with permission to use “ps” to see. Not to mention my shell history. Not to mention (part2) that now I have to highlight and cut-and-paste and type a silly-long command where before I could simply type “get”. Nice. Efficient. Big improvement.
- And another thing about patches: I tried to view a README this morning. ”No permission to see this page,” was the message I received. I can download the patch, but apparently the instructions are classified. The good news is I can log a TAR if I think I received that message in error.
- Speaking of logging a TAR, I logged one yesterday. Tried to view an update this morning. Server error. All morning. Can’t get in. At. All. (See #1 above)
- Just to chime in with everyone else: It’s slow. Really slow. When it’s up, that is. Great advertising for all of the highly-available, highly-scalable, grid-esque products from Oracle. A marketing master class.
- Has anyone else made the mistake of hitting their browser’s back button after selecting an article for reading? One awesome Metaflash feature is that if you – seemingly at any time – use your browser’s back button, you re-load the entire site. From the beginning. Stupid flash wheel and all. the whoooooole enchilada.
- For some reason I can’t seem to cut and paste even when I want to anymore (see complaint in #3 above). Anyone tried to highlight something on an article to copy it into a terminal window? Is this just a Safari problem? Isn’t Safari supported anymore? Did I miss that memo?
- Best of all, article content is occasionally different between Metalink and Metaflash. No, I’m not kidding. One example is document 125767.1 “Upgrading Developer 6i with Oracle Applications 11i.” The Metaflash version is missing steps that Metalink displayed. How can that be? It’s the same document ID for Larry’s sakes! I don’t know how or why, but now we don’t have the plain old un-flashy Metalink for a sanity check. If something doesn’t work, just log a TAR! (If Metaflash is up, that is.)
If this sounds too much like a rant, it’s nothing compared to the first few drafts. I had time to write and revise several times while waiting for the flash wheel to stop spinning.
Related post: Working with Oracle Support
It’s unbelievable that Oracle would release this pile of crap. I work for a very large company that has very little Oracle product and I can tell you that doesn’t leave us hankering for more.
Safari is supported. We should bug that. I am on a mac using Safari. Maybe show me what can’t be cut and pasted? It seems to work for me.
I filed a bug for your #3, so the URL is correct, so you can cut and paste into wget. We are trying to put together a script you could use to cut and paste to download a file or a plan (a collection of patches) with one script. Maybe you can tell us more on how you download and use wget? The FTP went away, I think, because they didn’t have SSO for FTP.
Which patch had that error? Was it one patch or all patches?
Arrrr! Is right. But I “know some people” in Oracle. Let me help you get these items resolved.
Update: The copy URL problem for a patch to download has been fixed in development. Of course, I can’t comment on when you will see this fix, but it is coming.
not to mention the lack of thought about what might go wrong to break the UI. First irritation clicking next when a search returns more than one page of results often just returns the first page a second time mislabled. That’s irritating but not unresolvable.
Just tried to log an SR for a client config manager not in use so log an SR manually. The product *must* be entered from a drop down list. This drop down appears to be populated from a database query – or in my case not just hangs with ‘possibe values pending’ I can type in the name of the product (Oracle Server – Enterprise Edition as I know very well indeed) but it won’t get validated, I must pick from the non-displayed drop down.
AAARGGGGHHHH indeed.
Niall
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the response to my somewhat less-than-constructive post.
I, and a bunch of people, I’m sure, appreciate the bug filing to get the download link problem fixed.
The issue I have with wget is not with wget per se – I use it all the time for anonymous FTP or HTTP download – but with the new process. I used to be able to, from a single command line prompt, log into the patch server and download my patch; my fingers never left the keyboard. Now I have to use a browser window and cut-and-paste to a command that also must include my manually added credentials. It’s just more cumbersome. Yes, I’ll get something scripted up and also check out any scripts Oracle provides, but the extra logistics have been very frustrating. And there _are_ ways to authenticate FTP or SCP or SFTP with LDAP or other authentication mechanisms to allow for SSO; what I care more about is the lost ability to do everything directly from the command line.
This may sound trivial, but my organization supports many, many Oracle customers and we download a _lot_ of patches. The added personal workflow steps add up and add no value to the end result.
As for you question about the patch – I don’t know that I have encountered a patch with a Metalink-related error. What I have seen is the same document ID display different information between the old and new Metalink. If the old Metalink is available somewhere I can dig up some of the examples from our internal ticketing system and show you.
Thanks again for your response. I sincerely appreciate it.
Chuck
I want to touch on Niall’s comment and Chucks…
So I see your goal, to be able to download patches without leaving the keyboard. I spoke to a Product Manager about this, this morning, and I think we can work something out better. In the meantime I have requested that the wget Copy URL be pushed to production quickly.
But I don’t see FTP coming back. I was told SSO just wasn’t going to happen with FTP. But lets see if we can solve your problem with wget.
Also, I would like to work on using a Patch plan as a way to collect up a lot of patches and then generate a single wget command sequence (copy and paste), but that would only help those with the collector.
How did you get the patch IDs “before” without using the metalink website? I would like to know how you work. Maybe we can go offline so I can get some more detail.
Naill – can you send me an exact example of clicking next not going to the next set of articles. a) I actually worked on that code (it has been in production for about 16 months), and b) I have never seen it do that, so if you can help me reproduce that, we will fix it.
And as for the SR issue. I would be happy to help with that too.
Did you file an SR about the SR problem?
Ok just kidding.
Show me the problem, and I will file it directly and speak to the team about it.
I used to consider myself as a power user of old metalink and now just can’t get anything done. If this is how fusion will work,i will sell my oracle shares.We are on demand customer and it gets even worse.
RFC a good concept but poor execution.
1. I don’t know what is going on on my RFC. Extremely hard to know what was last update as sort doesn’t work. Information is too fragmented.
2. Total time between raising SR and the RFC and all approvals..it is bad, very bad. After Raising SR, there is no communications for hours or even days for Priority 2 SRs.
3. Unless we call on demand , nothing gets done. Even Oracle helpdesk is struggling when we call.
4. Too much flash. i started to hate the flash now. Has any one done productivity impact on this new design.
5. RFC numbing. Good luck conveying this to Oracle helpdesk.
Hope oracle fixes all this.
Thank You,
Oh man, I totally hate the new website. I’m typing this right now as I wait for my patches to upload to my customer (5+ hours). I used to be able to go to updates.oracle.com and ftp the patches directly to the server. Nice, easy, quick.
Now I have to download them to my laptop and then re-upload them to my customer’s server. Why would Oracle take something so easy and useful away – so I can read someone else’s “review” of the patch I just downloaded. I didn’t care before and I don’t care now. All I know is that my productivity has hit the crapper.
Thanks Oracle.
BTW, I still can’t change my freaking password on the new site.
Scott..
As per the first post, wget is supported, so you do not need to download them and move them.
Use wget instead of FTP. This is the SSO supported “way”.
And the doc and UI are being fixed to make this easier…
And why can’t you change your password? When you go to the Settings Tab > Account page.
Is there is pencil icon next to your password? When you click it does it work?
Here’s a good one. I have 16 CSI numbers. Before the new metalink I could review, update and create SR’s for any one of them. Now they are all read-only for me. I called support and they said I will have to contact each administrator to get them to fix it how it used to be. I had an urgent issue this morning and I could not create an SR on behalf of my client. I didn’t do this, Oracle did. Now I have to dig through all 15 clients, send out the “please give me privs” emails to each admin, hope they aren’t in the Bahamas for Xmas, and then wait for it to actually happen. I tell, Oracle is going to hell in handbasket. Market share and profits might be good for now, but moves like this are leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
It gets really worse for OnDemand customers. We now have to monitor more than one ticket for a single issue; SR & RFC. A single SR could have multiple RFCs associated to it. There is a gap between SR and RFC. Also, the RFC updates are not sorted correctly — it’s just a living hell navigating the “Metaflash” trying to figure out what has been done. The webpage does not refresh correctly, i hate the spinning wheel of unfortune. I had to close the page and log back in again. What a total waste of time. Can we please retire this pain in the rear “My Oracle Support”? Bring back Classic Metalink for crying out loud!
I really hate the new way to search for patches in the new metalink – why did oracle change it to make it worse? it takes much more time to search for anything in the new metalink, from open TAR’s to search for anything
Helena, what exactly are you doing with the new search where it is taking much more time? If you can be specific, we could see how we can resolve it. Specifically in the patch search sounds like a problem for you.
We have taken other feedback from these forums and “fixed” the product (sorting releases, filtering by platform, most recently used items, etc…)
So give some more details…
The new metalink is truly an awful thing.
Why is there no search feature in the Select a Product drop down? There are hundred of entries here, and none of the naming conventions match the product descriptions from other Oracle sites like the forum. It takes me 15 minutes just to find the product I am looking for… I thought Oracle was a lot smarter than this.
I really have nothing productive to offer to the thread, but appreciate the opportunity to kvetch.
New metalink is pooey. Seems like it’s violating all kinds of user interface conventions and rules. Why can’t I open an article in another browser tab under my search results? Why doesn’t ctl+f not work to invoke find? I could go on.
Looks like the bare minimum features are missing.
My keyboard is totally scrambled: I type a key, I get another one in texboxes. Cut and paste doesn’t work with Ctrl-Ins / Shift-Ins.
I would blush if I released such a crappy software.