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Oracle® Database Licensing Information
10g Release 2 (10.2)

Part Number B14199-02
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1 Oracle Database Editions

This chapter describes the four Oracle Database editions and the features available with those editions. It contains the following sections:

The Oracle Database Product Family

Oracle Database is available in four editions, each suitable for different development and deployment scenarios. Oracle also offers several database options, packs, and other products that enhance the capabilities of Oracle Database for specific application purposes. This section describes the Oracle Database editions. The database enhancement products are described in Chapter 2, "Options and Packs".

Oracle Database Standard Edition One Oracle Database Standard Edition One delivers unprecedented ease of use, power, and performance for workgroup, department-level, and Web applications. From single-server environments for small business to highly distributed branch environments, Oracle Database Standard Edition One includes all the facilities necessary to build business-critical applications.

Oracle Database Standard Edition Oracle Database Standard Edition delivers the unprecedented ease of use, power, and performance of Standard Edition One, with support for larger machines and clustering of services with Real Application Clusters. Real Application Clusters is not included in the Standard Edition of releases prior to Oracle Database 10g, nor is it an available option with those earlier releases.

Oracle Database Enterprise Edition Oracle Database Enterprise Edition provides the performance, availability, scalability, and security required for mission-critical applications such as high-volume online transaction processing (OLTP) applications, query-intensive data warehouses, and demanding Internet applications. Oracle Database Enterprise Edition contains all of the components of Oracle Database, and can be further enhanced with the purchase of the options and packs described in Chapter 2, "Options and Packs".

Oracle Database Personal Edition Oracle Database Personal Edition supports single-user development and deployment environments that require full compatibility with Oracle Database Standard Edition One, Oracle Database Standard Edition, and Oracle Database Enterprise Edition.

Personal Edition includes all of the components that are included with Enterprise Edition, as well as all of the options that are available with Enterprise Edition, with the exception of the Oracle Real Application Clusters option, which cannot be used with Personal Edition. Personal Edition is available on Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit versions). The Management Packs are not included in Personal Edition.

Feature Availability by Edition

Table 1-1 lists the features that are not available with Standard Edition or Standard Edition One. This table can help you understand the difference between the editions and determine whether you require Enterprise Edition (or Personal Edition for a single-user environment) for the features you need in your business.

Table 1-1 Features Not Available with Oracle Database Standard Edition or Standard Edition One

Area and Feature Comments

High Availability

Oracle Data Guard

Data Guard provides a comprehensive set of services that create, maintain, manage, and monitor one or more standby databases to enable a production Oracle Database to survive disasters and data corruption.

Fast-start fault recovery

This feature provides fast and predictable recovery from system failures.

Online operations

The following online operations are not included with Standard Edition or Standard Edition One:

  • Online index maintenance

  • Online table organization

  • Online table redefinition

Backup and recovery

The following backup and recovery features are not included with Standard Edition or Standard Edition One:

  • Block-level media recovery

  • Parallel backup and recovery

  • Change-aware incremental backups

  • Duplexed backup sets (backup sets can be written to multiple devices in parallel)

  • Point-in-time tablespace recovery (a tablespace can be recovered up to a specified point in time after a failure or inadvertent transaction execution)

  • Trial recovery (redo is applied in memory only but is not written to disk and is easily rolled back)

The following backup and recovery features require the Oracle Advanced Security option if you are backing up to disk:

  • RMAN Backup Encryption

  • Unused Block Compression

Please refer to "Oracle Label Security".

Oracle Flashback features

The following Oracle Flashback features are not part of Standard Edition or Standard Edition One:

  • Oracle Flashback Table

  • Oracle Flashback Database

  • Oracle Flashback Transaction Query

  • Restore Points

Security

Oracle Advanced Security

This option is described in "Oracle Advanced Security".

Oracle Label Security

This option is described in "Oracle Label Security".

Virtual Private Database

This feature provides functionality to create security policies that implement row-level security.

Fine-grained auditing

This features allows the monitoring of database access based on the content of the data accessed.

Enterprise User Security

This features allows the definition of enterprise users and roles.

Application roles

This feature allows the creation of roles that can be enabled only by applications using an authorized package.

N-tier authentication authorization

This feature preserves client identity throughout all tiers.

Manageability

Oracle Change Management Pack

This pack is described in "Oracle Change Management Pack".

Oracle Configuration Management Pack

This pack is described in "Oracle Configuration Management Pack".

Oracle Diagnostic Pack

This pack is described in "Oracle Diagnostic Pack".

Oracle Tuning Pack

This pack is described in "Oracle Tuning Pack".

Database Resource Manager

Database Resource Manager gives Oracle Database more control over resource management decisions, circumventing problems arising from inefficient operating system management.

VLDB, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence

Oracle Partitioning

This option is described in "Oracle Partitioning".

Oracle OLAP

This option is described in "Oracle On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP)".

Oracle Data Mining

This option is described in "Oracle Data Mining".

Data compression

This feature provides the ability to compress tables and partitions.

Bitmapped index and bitmapped join index

This feature provides an index type commonly used in data warehouses for columns with low cardinality, such as 'Y' or 'N', to dramatically improve performance gains in a data warehouse application.

Star Query Transformation

This technique improves query performance in data warehouses that use star schemas. It transforms queries to include new subqueries, allowing fact tables to be accessed much more efficiently using bitmap indexes.

Export transportable tablespace

Import transportable tablespace, including cross-platform transport, is included with Standard Edition and Standard Edition One, but export transportable tablespace is not included.

Asynchronous Change Data Capture

This feature provides a framework for capturing change data, publishing it, and enabling applications to subscribe to the change data in a controlled fashion. Change capture occurs asynchronously based on the information in the Oracle redo logs.

Summary management

Summary management consists of mechanisms to define materialized views and dimensions, refresh and query rewrite mechanisms, and a collection of materialized view analysis and advisory functions and procedures in the DBMS_OLAP package.

Parallel Operations

Parallel query

Oracle Database transparently distributes query execution across multiple processes, resulting in excellent performance.

Parallel DML

This feature no longer requires the Oracle Partitioning option. DML operations are transparently divided across multiple processes.

Parallel index build

Indexes can be created using parallel processes, significantly improving performance of the operation.

Parallel statistics gathering

--

Parallel Data Pump export and import

The new Data Pump Export and Import utilities can each be run in parallel, resulting in better performance in loading and unloading data and metadata.

Parallel text index creation

--

Parallel backup and recovery

--

Information Integration

Oracle Streams

Message queuing and apply features of Oracle Streams are available in Standard Edition and Standard Edition One, but change capture is available only in Enterprise Edition.

Advanced Replication (multimaster)

Basic replication (which is available with Standard Edition and Standard Edition One) provides support for read-only and updatable materialized views (for replication) and multitier materialized views. Standard Edition and Standard Edition One databases can also act as a master site for materialized views, but cannot participate in multimaster replication.

Oracle Messaging Gateway

Oracle Messaging Gateway consists of an administration package for gateway configuration and management and a gateway agent that processes propagation.

Networking

Connection Manager

This feature provides multiplexing, multiprotocol connectivity, and network access control.

Multiprotocol connectivity

This feature bridges Oracle Net Services communities of users that use different network protocols such as SPX/IPX, TCP/IP, or LU6.2.

Content Management

Oracle Spatial

This option is described in "Oracle Spatial".


Features Specific to the Windows Platform

The following features related to application development are available only on Windows platforms:

  • COM Automation

  • Microsoft Transaction Server/COM+ integration

  • Oracle OLE DB Provider

  • Oracle Objects for OLE (OO4O)

  • VLM Support

  • OLE DB .NET and ODBC .NET support

  • Native .NET Data Provider - ODP .NET

  • Oracle Database Extensions for .NET (.NET Stored Procedures)

Special-Use Licensing

Oracle Standard Edition and Real Application Clusters (RAC) When used with Oracle Real Application Clusters in a clustered server environment, Oracle Database Standard Edition requires the use of Oracle Clusterware. Third-party clusterware management solutions are not supported. In addition, Automatic Storage Management (ASM) must be used to manage all database-related files, including datafiles, online logs, archive logs, control file, spfiles, and the flash recovery area. Third-party volume managers and file systems are not supported for this purpose.

Oracle Clusterware Oracle Clusterware can be installed and used to protect all Oracle databases and third-party applications on the same cluster. At a minimum, one machine involved in the cluster must be licensed using the appropriate metric for either Oracle Database Enterprise Edition or Oracle Database Standard Edition. A cluster is defined to include all the machines that share the same Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) and Voting Disk.

Infrastructure Repository Databases A separate Oracle Database can be installed and used as a Recovery Manager (RMAN) repository without additional license requirements, provided that all the Oracle databases managed in this repository are correctly licensed. This repository database may also be used for the Oracle Enterprise Grid Control repository. It may not be used or deployed for other uses.

A separate Oracle Database can be installed and used as a Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control (OEM Grid Control) repository without additional license requirements, provided that all the targets (databases, applications, and so forth) managed in this repository are correctly licensed. This database may also be used for the RMAN repository. It may not be used or deployed for other uses.

Restricted-Use Licensing The following restricted-use licenses are included with Oracle Database 10g in the editions indicated: