All about the Oracle Licenses

Today’s software environments have become complex, mainly with the integration of the web, the increased usage of corporate self-service applications, and the proliferation of corporate extranets. For ensuring the data security and integrity, the companies often utilize the multiple database instances in order to manage the application development environments.Oracle Database is available in five editions. Each of them is suitable for various kinds of development as well as deployment scenarios. Oracle offers different database options, packs, and many other products that increase the capabilities of Oracle Database for the specific application purposes.

Oracle Secure Backup Express is associated with the Oracle Database. Oracle's technical support organization provides technical support, updates or phone support to the customers for the Oracle Secure Backup Express. It is used to back up another Oracle Product that is associated with a valid Customer Support Identifier (CSI). If Oracle Secure Backup Express provides back up facility to the Oracle database associated with a valid Customer Support Identifier, then the Oracle Support provides the technical support for the database backup. Technical support and updates are only provided to the customer, who maintains the technical support services for his/her Oracle database license along with the Oracle's Technical Support Policies. Oracle Secure Backup is a separately licensed product as well as it is supported along with the Oracle's Technical Support Policies.

According to a general rule, pricing practices of Oracle are not involved with the restriction to the count of database instances that a customer installs on a server. They also don’t differentiate between the single server and networked environments. Same server can be used to install multiple environments. All the users of all environments have to be properly licensed.

Environments and Licenses

Typical Database Software Environments are:

·        Development Environment

·        Test Environment

·        Production Environment

Each environment is associated with a different license. They are discussed as follows:

Development Environment:In a development environment, the customers may use Oracle Full Use licenses. The customers may not use Oracle Database that is licensed under the OTN License Agreement associated with any operations of internal data processing, classroom activity, or any other production or commercial use purposes. The OTN License Agreement is considered as a limited license. It is not a part of any other Oracle agreement such as Oracle License and Services Agreement (OLSA) or the Oracle Master Agreement (OMA).

Test Environment: Every program that is used in a test environment have to be licensed under an OLSA, OMA or other appropriate Oracle as well as Oracle authorized reseller license agreement.

Production Environment: The environment that is used by the end users for the business andother operations is called a production environment. The programs that are associated with the particular environment must be licensed under an OLSA, OMA, or appropriate Oracle as well as Oracle authorized reseller license agreement.

The oracle partitioning licenseis a separately licensed option of the Oracle database that is only associated with the Enterprise Edition of the database. The database partitioning enables the DBAs to divide the large tables into more meaningful and manageable "sub-tables", which are called partitions. They help to improve the database performance, availability, and manageability.