Besides training for Oracle University, Oracle has a couple of free learning and training resources out there on the web too.

https://livesql.oracle.com --> A SQL scratchpad that also includes scripts and tutorials.

Oracle Live Labs (https://apexapps.oracle.com/pls/apex/dbpm/r/livelabs/home) --> Granted, while it's easier googled as "Oracle Live Labs" than to remember that URL, it does, however, provide free Hands-On Labs for users.

https://oracle.github.io/learning-library/ --> The instructions for the Hands-On Labs above and more can be found in the learning-library

asktom.oracle.com --> I fully free Q&A portal where you can ask Oracle Database employees for help. Furthermore, it offers regular "Office Hours" live webinars and an entire course of learning Oracle Database: https://asktom.oracle.com/databases-for-developers.htm

I've got to attend some free Oracle classes at uni (taught by Oracle employees), they were horribly boring. I don't think they'd have any chance at selling to technical staff even if they tried.

>Oracle sells to executives, not technical staff.

agree. i have a year or two with Oracle Apex. at a pervious job, we were using Java to develop a web app but a executive saw how fast you can create a web page/app with Oracle Apex. we switch over since we already using Oracle for database.

Enterprise software is not targeting you (techies). its for CxOs.

We kludged together an apex reporting solution to replace an old payroll UI. It was quick to work with in relation to the number of reports we were able to publish.

It’s more than that. Oracle is sold off the back of its middleware applications. Which equally suck too…but at least they’re solving difficult problems that most other database vendors don’t both with.

Such as?

Such as enterprise level accountancy solutions, human resource packages, payroll solutions (which is the where I worked with Oracle) and so on and so forth.

A lot of the time when businesses by Oracle, they’re buying into the middleware rather than the RDBMS.

All the apps they bought.

Siebel, PeopleSoft, BEA Weblogic.

I was the DBA for a Siebel instance for ten years.

I would say J.D. Edwards, but that's AS400/DB2.

SAP is also a big driver, although they don't want to be (so much so that they bought Sybase).

J.D.Edwards old World product was AS400, but EnterpriseOne (formerly OneWorld) is also Linux, Windows, AIX, Solaris, HPUX, and IBMi and is still very much alive. Runs on Oracle DB, MS SQL Server, and DB2.

In addition to Oracle owned middleware, it's common to end up running Oracle because your vendor supports only it.

Sometimes with somewhat sensible reasons, like Oracle combining clustering and in-memory encryption, but it still means you don't get to choose...