Oracle introduces free database in Asia Pacific

Mumbai: Oracle India Private Limited (Oracle India) today announced the launch of OracleDatabase 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE), a free, starter edition of the database software. A beta version of Oracle Database XE is available for companies in India to download today.

This new edition of Oracle Database 10g offers application developers, database administrators (DBAs) and students a free starter database to develop and deploy their applications. It is also freely available for independent software vendors (ISVs) and hardware vendors to distribute or embed with their applications and products.

Explaining the product features at the announcement, Krishan Dhawan, managing director, Oracle India, said, "Oracle Database XE allows developers, DBAs, ISVs and students the opportunity to learn, develop and deploy on the world's leading database software. No one has to make do anymore; everyone can now start with the best."

Analyst firm IDC's Carl Olofson, research director for information management and data integration software research, said, "Developers, DBAs, students, and ISVs often look to no cost DBMSs to get started in developing and learning to develop database applications. When such a DBMS is supported by sufficient literature, online technical material, and professional experts, and allows developers to easily grow and support their applications and data needs over time without needing to convert their database later on, the result is a low risk path that offers a high potential return not only immediately, but in the long run."

With the introduction of Oracle Database XE, Oracle has effectively expanded its database portfolio to six editions - Oracle Enterprise Edition, Oracle Standard Edition, Oracle Standard Edition One, Oracle Personal Edition, Oracle Database Lite, and now Oracle Database XE. The six database editions offer different levels of advance database features to best suit customers' business and budget needs.

"We now have a database menu for organisations and developers of all sizes and budgets," said Sundar Ram, senior director, technology pre-sales, Oracle Asia-Pacific. "This menu includes databases that can process terabytes of data alongside advanced data management capabilities, to a free starter edition like Oracle Database XE, which allows SMEs, ISVs and developers to adopt and experiment with the world's No. 1 database for the last 28 years."
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A recent report from analyst firm IDC found that Oracle led Asia's $1.2-billion IDMS market in 2004 with 37.8 per cent market share, which includes new license and maintenance revenues across APACxJP. In India, Oracle led the market with 52 per centshare in year 2004

Gartner had released a similar report based only on new license revenues in APACxJP, which found that Oracle led Asia's database market with 31.5 per cent market share, growing 18.1 per cent — faster than the average market growth of 15.4 per cent.

Oracle Database XE is available on 32-bit Linux and Windows operating systems, and can be installed on any supported hardware platform. As a free, starter database, Oracle Database XE:

• uses at most one CPU or one dual core of processing capability;
• memory usage is kept below one gigabyte (GB);
• is limited to a single instance per system; and,
• stores up to four GB of user data.