Oracle : Do you even internet? (broken links again)

I mentioned in a recent post that Oracle are often guilty of changing URLs, which breaks all the documentation links in your site. Someone replied with this link. I knew I had a lot of clean-up to do, but I expected most of it to be old URLs, like stuff pointing to 8i, 9i etc.

I’ve just been looking and vast swathes of links have been changed in the 12.1 docs. In some cases, articles I wrote a couple of weeks ago are screwed. The reference manual is guilty of this big time!

• Before: http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/REFRN/refrn10140.htm
• After: http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/REFRN/GUID-70035A22-E031-4975-A51C-871AE1F2F260.htm#REFRN23823

Check this one out too.

• Before: http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/SUTIL/release_changes.htm#BABEJJAA
• After: http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/SUTIL/GUID-F4EE2A42-3986-4597-9088-A506173ABABF.htm#GUID-0FC02CF3-D149-4EA9-AE3E-CB869921CF40__BABEJJAA

I’m not even going to make them links, because they will probably change again next week. 🙁

URLs DO NOT CHANGE!

This is really basic internet stuff. If you must change them, you have to put proper redirects in place so people can still get to your content FOREVER!

I’ve written about Oracle doing this before (here and here).

I’m always trying to encourage people to get involved in the community, but how can they possibly write good content if it is riddled with broken links to the docs? Going back to repair old content is soul destroying, so don’t make them do it!

Oracle. Please, please, please learn how to internet!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Check out the MySQL documentation. It is arranged so neatly and you can flick between versions so simply. I know the documentation is much smaller, but something like this must be possible with some planning!

Update: I’ve written something a little more constructive on this subject here.

Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer. View all posts by Tim...