Posted on November 2nd, 2005 by Kevin Dangoor

Oracle releases a free database

Oracle has introduced a free version of their database called Oracle 10g Express Edition (XE). One interesting thing about this release is that Oracle has explicitly stated that people can redistribute this database. The database has built in limitations designed to keep it targeted at only lowish-end apps, so it shouldn’t cannibalize the sales of their full-blown system. Contrast this with Java, which is free but annoys everyone to no end because you can’t distribute it.

Personally, I can’t imagine using Oracle for the kinds of things for which they’re targeting XE. MySQL, PostgreSQL and Firebird all deal pretty nicely with the low end. Oracle even mentions using XE as an embedded database! I wonder what kind of footprint that would have. Certainly much larger than sqlite and probably much larger than Firebird as well.

via Ned Batchelder

6 Responses to “Oracle releases a free database”

anon on November 2nd, 2005 2:45 pm:

“Contrast this with Java, which is free but annoys everyone to no end because you can’t distribute it.”

I’m curious – what can’t you distribute? I’ve never encountered a problem distributing a Java app. Or maybe I’ve been doing it illegally all along ;)

tazzzzz on November 2nd, 2005 2:59 pm:

You can redistribute Java applications, you just can’t redistribute the JVM. That’s why Linux distributions don’t include Java and have to come up with workarounds to make it play well with their package systems.

anon on November 2nd, 2005 3:13 pm:

Ah, yes, the JVM. I do remember that. For some reason I thought you were talking about Java code.

Thanks!

Damjan on November 4th, 2005 5:24 pm:

The problem for oracle is its client libraries, they are very peculiar to install..

Bob H. on November 8th, 2005 8:06 pm:

The good thing about it is, now people can actually use a smaller version to develop on and then easily move that over to a production instance. I don’t think it will replace a MySQL or Pg but wierder things have happen in this industry!

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