Oracle Database 10g XE (Express Edition)

Oracle Corporation's Database 10g Express Edition is a free database product. It is free to download, free to deploy, and free to distribute. This alone is appealing to many small business owners who need a cost-effective database system. It is also the first database designed for grid computing, which cuts management costs while providing the highest possible quality of service. This can also cut cost and increase profit.

Oracle Database Express 10g XE supports C, C++, Oracle Application Express, ODBC,PL/SQL, .NET, OLE DB,HTML DB, JDBC (Java), and PHP on both Microsoft Windows and Linux 32 bit platforms. Database administration is easily done through a browser interface.

A definite advantage of using Oracle Database 10g is that it uses the same code base as Oracle Database 10g R2, so any applications built using the express edition can be easily upgraded to use more advanced versions of Oracle's database products without changing the application code or the database definition statements. This means that if your business grows beyond the capabilities of the free express version of database 10g, it will be much easier to upgrade the system.

Along with the free download of Oracle Database 10g XE, you can download the free Oracle Developer Suite 10g. The Developer Suite 10g includes:

• Oracle Developer Suite 10g
  
  • Oracle Forms
    
  • Oracle Designer
    
  • Software configuration manager
    
  • Oracle Reports
    
  • Oracle Discoverer
    
• Oracle Business Intelligence Beans 10g
  
  • Presentation beans
    
  • Graph and cross graph data beans
    
  • Query calculation builders
    
• Oracle JDeveloper 10g (For Java development)
  

Oracle Database 10g XE has a disk footprint of only 150 MB. To have such a small footprint, limitations had to be set. Database 10g XE will only utilize 1 GB of memory with one processor, and will support up to 4 GB of user data. I looked at the online support forum and found it to be comprehensive, and the tutorials are interactive, providing hands-on learning. With the great development tools available and the easy scalability, Oracle Database 10g XE is a great database solution for most small businesses, DBA's, and developers.