In 2005, in an attempt to compete with free Open Source databases like MySQL and with Microsoft’s lower priced SQL Server, Oracle introduced a free version of their Oracle 10 database, the Oracle 10g Express Edition (XE).
Oracle Database XE has full code database functionality but is limited in that it can store only up to 4GB of data, use no more than 1Gig memory, and use only one CPU on the server machine. Enough limitations to prevent serious consideration from most production environments. Their targeted audience for the XE version is ‘Open Source Developers’, DBAs needing an environment for testing and training, ISVs who want a startup database to distribute with their application, and students.
It’s not clear how much adoption Oracle XE has received. One thing is clear though –that’s the increasing amount of success that Microsoft is having with SQL Server. For the past few years Microsoft has been seeing 30 percent revenue growth each quarter in SQL Server sales. Most of the growth is coming from SMBs and companies outside the US.
In a response to the competition, Oracle has cut pricing on multicore servers. Oracle’s new pricing mirrors that of Microsoft, charging per processor socket count rather than per processor core count. The change could result in as much as an 87 percent savings.
An example is a customer running Oracle on a four quadcore processor. Previously that customer would have had to buy licenses for all 16 cores that may have cost as much as $480,000. Under the new pricing, the cost could drop to $60,000.
Rapid changes in hardware technologies are causing many vendors to readjust their price lists. Both AMD and Intel are gearing up production of quad-core chips over the coming months, so pricing structures around multicore are becoming more important.
This is the third time in the last two years that Oracle has made a pricing adjustment because of changes in server hardware capabilities.
