According to the survey, more than seven out of 10 Oracle databases were down for more than an hour in the past year, even as a growing need for round-the-clock availability has been felt. IOUG's survey for April included 265 members, most of them database administrators, developers or managers.

According to the survey, security incidents led to only 1% of unplanned database outages, while power outages and natural disasters accounted for just 7% and 4% of unplanned database outages, respectively. Hardware problems were behind almost half of the outages.

Problems with the network, the application stack or the database itself contributed to about a third of the unplanned incidents, which could have more than one cause. Those experiencing both hardware and network problems were most likely to report that their databases were down for more than 15 hours. Performance slowdowns were also common with 40% of respondents reporting at least one slowdown every two months.

A full 80% said round-the-clock reliability was a necessity for at least some of their company databases. Moreover, 43% were governed by service-level agreements that required less than 24 hours of total downtime, including planned and unplanned, per year.

Planned downtime, such as when replacing a server or installing an operating system, database patches or upgrades, was also common. A full 39% reported losing 10 hours or more as a result of planned outages.

Respondents complained that the greatest challenge is to keep up with all the Oracle bugs and patch fixes with even the current version of Oracle 10gR2 reporting a large number of bugs and issues.