Oracle Database Express Edition: Now Database Free
In April 2023, Oracle announced the release of Oracle Database 23c Free. Here’s a summary of what you need to know about this release.
Firstly, the name is interesting — ‘Oracle Database Free’ (we happen to be talking about version 23c here, which pre-empts the anticipated ‘main’ release of 23c Enterprise Edition/Standard Edition 2) — there’s also a secondary name associated with this release; the full title is ‘Oracle Database 23c Free-Developer Release’ — quite a long-winded name.
At the moment, it is expected that ‘Oracle Database Free’ will only be available as this single ‘edition’ — i.e. it will always have ‘Developer Release’ after the full name. In case you aren’t aware, version 23c of the database is the next Long-Term Support (LTS) release and should be the target version for production workloads as soon as reasonable after it is released (I’m looking at those of you still using 11g and earlier!).
It’s worth noting that this (‘Database Free’) appears to be the new name for Oracle Database XE — i.e. Oracle 21c XE was the last Express Edition / XE release. Oracle 10g XE was first introduced in 2006 and so the name has lasted a long time before this latest change.
If we dwell on the name for a second; there’s clearly two messages Oracle are trying to send:
1) It is free!
2) It is developer-focussed. Oracle are seemingly trying to entice developers to adopt Oracle database and this is an obvious ‘stepping stone’ to allow developers to get used to Oracle database 23c without any license challenges!
These are both good initiatives. The developer focus is part of Oracle 23c ‘App Simple’, encouraging developers to take advantage of new and improved features such as microservices, JSON and graph. Of course, anything that can retain developers and make choosing or ‘staying with’ Oracle technologies helps to retain longer term customers running applications in production. Oracle has made accessing the binaries easy, for example using Docker and Virtual Box images without a license agreement. On that basis, you can deploy 23c Free wherever you like, including desktops, cloud and VMware, without concern.
It remains to be seen if this refocus will entice developers to choose Oracle database for their applications. However, for those already using Oracle or wanting a free edition of the database, what does Oracle 23c Database Free-Developer Release mean for you?
Well, it’s made available and offers functionality on the same basis as Oracle XE was previously (see here) — i.e., it has many of the ‘full’ Enterprise Edition features, with rights to use what would normally be considered extra cost options — so you can use and test out a lot of the features you want without cost. You can also run production workloads — there’s no restriction on what you use this edition for.
What’s the catch? In-line with previous XE releases, there are some considerations and technical limitations:
· There is no support
· There are no patches available
· It will run on 2 CPUs (or threads, depending on what the OS ‘sees’) and with 2Gb of memory and 12Gb of user data (in datafiles) as a maximum
· It is currently available only for Linux
· You can only have one Database Free instance per ‘machine’ (virtual machine, cloud instance or physical server)
· Depending on which extra cost option you want, it may not be available: see here for full list of which features and options are ‘licensable’
As with previous XE releases, there’s a place for a lightweight, limited Oracle database release — e.g. to underpin Application Express (APEX), to provide a database for developers or to test out features. The fact you can do this without worrying about licensing (no VMware concerns here!) is a bonus.
Contact us if you have any questions on this topic or any other Oracle license matter.
About the Author
Paul Bullen is a Principal License Consultant at Version 1.
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