Licensing
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The Oracle Standard Edition One, Standard Edition and Enterprise editions of the database can be licensed using the Named User Plus metric or the Processor metric.
PROCESSOR:
The Processor metric is used in environments such as the Internet where users cannot be identified and counted. This metric can also be used when the Named User population is very high and it is more cost effective to license per processor. The Processor metric considers all processors where Oracle is installed and/or running. Programs licensed on a processor basis may be accessed by internal users (including agents and contractors) and third party users. A license is required for each processor.
An allowance (discount) is made for multicore chips. For the purposes of counting the number of processors which require licensing in the case of a Sun UltraSPARC T1 processor with 4, 6 or 8 cores at 1.0 gigahertz or 8 cores at 1.2 gigahertz, "n" cores shall be determined by multiplying the total number of cores by a factor of .25. When counting the number of processors which require licensing for AMD and Intel multicore chips, "n" cores shall be determined by multiplying the total number of cores by a factor of .50. For all hardware platforms not otherwise specified in this section, the multicore factor is .75. All cores on all multicore chips are to be aggregated before multiplying by the appropriate factor and all fractions of a number are to be rounded up to the next whole number.
Notwithstanding the above, when licensing Oracle Standard Edition One or Standard Edition programs on servers with a maximum of one processor with 1 or 2 cores, only one processor is counted.
Licensing by processor is subject to rules that depend on the edition, as follows.
Oracle Standard Edition One:
This may only be licensed on servers that have a maximum capacity of 2 single core processors, ie 2 physical occupied sockets. For multicore chips, the maximum permitted number of cores per server is determined by multiplying the core processor licensing factors (see above) by the number of cores. The result of this calculation must be less than or equal to 2 and the total number of actual cores must be less than or equal to 4.
Oracle Database Standard Edition:
This may only be licensed on servers that have a maximum capacity of 4 single core processors, ie 4 physical occupied sockets. For multicore chips, the maximum permitted number of cores per server is determined by multiplying the core processor licensing factors (see above) by the number of cores. The result of this calculation must be less than or equal to 4 and the total number of actual cores must be less than or equal to 8. Additionally, it may be licensed on a single cluster of servers supporting up to a maximum of four single core processors per cluster (two 2-way nodes, four 1-way nodes - and one 1-way and one 3-way). For multicore chips, the maximum permitted number of cores per cluster is determined by multiplying the core processor licensing factors (see above) by the number of cores. The result of this calculation must be less than or equal to 4 and the total number of actual cores in the cluster must be less than or equal to 8.
Enterprise Edition and associated options:
There is no maximum number of processors or cores that can be licensed. For multicore chips, the number of cores per server for which licenses are required is determined by multiplying the core processor licensing factors (see above) by the number of cores. Processors that are switched off or are physically hard partitioned so that they are not used by the Oracle database, do not have to be counted. There needs to be 100% certainty that the processor cannot be physically accessed by the database for such processors to be excluded from the count - which is why software partitioning does not qualify as this can be circumvented.
NAMED USER PLUS:
This metric can be used in all environments. There is no separate server license. Again, different rules apply depending on the edition:
Standard Edition One and Standard Edition:
These require a minimum of five Named User Plus licenses or the total number of actual users, whichever is greater. The number of processors or cores isn't used in determining the number of Named User licenses. The processor rules described above DO apply; Standard Edition One and Standard Edition must not be used on servers with more than 2 and 4 occupied sockets respectively.
Enterprise Edition:
This requires a minimum of 25 Named User Plus licenses per corresponding number of processors or the total number of actual users, whichever is greater. If the user minimum is 25 Named Users Plus per processor, then follow the instructions below to calculate the minimum number of named user plus licenses required for your intended hardware configuration.
1. Determine the number of processors on each server where the programs are installed and/or running.
2. Add together the processors on each server.
3. Multiply the total number of processors by 25
4. The resultant number represents the minimum number of named user plus licenses required for this hardware configuration.
TERM LICENCES
Term licenses are available. These are useful for those running short term projects or start-ups that need to keep costs down until they are properly established.
Pricing is based on;
4-Year Term License at 60% of Perpetual License;
3-Year Term License at 50% of Perpetual License;
2-Year Term License at 35% of Perpetual License;
1-Year Term License at 20% of Perpetual License.
Contact our sales team for assistance with Term Licences
For the complete and legal set of definitions, please refer to the Oracle License and Services Agreement on Oracle's website.
What are the options?
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The Oracle Database product set is segmented by scalability and functionality.
Scalability
Standard Edition One, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition have no database or RAM size restrictions. They all provide 64bit support and are available for Windows, Linux and Unix. They differ in terms of scalability as follows:
Standard Edition One - max 2 occupied single core sockets
Standard Edition - max 4 occupied single core sockets
Enterprise Edition - unlimited number of cores
There is also a free edition called Oracle Database XE which has the following restrictions:
Max 1 CPU, 1GB RAM, 4GB database size restriction, 32bit only. It is available from www.oracleonwindows.co.uk
For further details, please consult the licensing tab.
Functionality
All editions of Oracle Database have been built on the same code base. Applications built on the free XE edition can be ported all the way up to the Enterprise edition without having to be altered.
There are a few functional differences between editions as follows:
Real Application Clusters (RAC)
This is only included with Standard although it is available as an add-on for Enterprise. Customers must use Oracle Clusterware (as third-party clusterware is not supported) and Oracle Automatic Storage Management.
The following are included with Enterprise only:
Flashback Table, Database and Transaction Query (Diagnose and undo errors to reduce recovery time)
Secure Application Roles (Enable roles only after a user passes any number of security checks)
Virtual Private Database (Enforce data security and privacy with customisable, policy-based access control down to the row level)
Fine-Grained Auditing (Allows highly focused auditing with almost no 'background noise')
Transportable Tablespaces, Including Cross-Platform (Transport a set of tablespaces from one database to another, or from one database to itself)
Information Lifecycle Management (Understand how data evolves, determine how it grows, monitor how its usage changes and decide how long it should be kept)
Summary Management - Materialized View Query Rewrite (Automatically recognizing materialized view usage to satisfy requests)
Oracle Streams (Propagate and manage data, transactions and events in a data stream either within a database or from one database to another)
The following add-ons can be used with Standard Edition One, Standard and Enterprise:
Oracle Secure Backup (Secure, high performance tape backup management for the Oracle Database and heterogenous file systems reducing the cost and complexity of networked data protection)
Oracle Audit Vault (Automates the collection and analysis of audit data from multiple systems, turning audit data into a key security resource)
The following are only available as add-ons to the Enterprise Edition:
Total Recall (Provides secure, efficient, easy-to-use and application-transparent solution for long-term storage of historical data)
Active Data Guard (Enhances disaster protection investments by offloading resource intensive operations to a single physical standby database, enhancing overall quality of service)
Real Application Clusters (Run any packaged or custom application unchanged across multiple connected, or "clustered," servers)
Oracle Database Vault (Restricts super-user and privileged-user access across applications and data)
Oracle Advanced Security (Address privacy and compliance requirements)
Oracle Label Security (Provides out-of-the-box row-level security. Compare user security clearances with data classification labels attached to data rows)
Real Application Testing (Reduces risk and costs of adopting new technologies, whether it's operating systems, servers or software)
Advanced Compression (Compresses all types of data, including structured and unstructured data, to help you use resources more efficiently and lower storage costs)
OLAP (Use built-in analytical workspaces for Online Analytical Processing)
Partitioning (Enables large tables and indexes to be split into smaller, more manageable components, without requiring changes to underlying applications)
Data Mining (Enables efficient information extraction from the very largest databases and integration with business intelligence applications)
Spatial (Support for sophisticated GIS deployments)
Oracle Content Database (Ready-to-use Web services to seamlessly integrate content management capabilities into the business processes)
Advanced warehouse tools that include Enterprise ETL, Data Quality, and Connectors Options
Benefits
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Support for more types of data than any other database including XML, audio, documents, text and more
High performance business intelligence services such as ETL, data warehousing, OLAP, and data mining
The most comprehensive and open access to Web Services through SQL, Java, XML and standard Web interfaces
Efficient management of multi-terabyte of data with advanced parallel pipeling of all operations
Upgrade policy and support
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To gain access to previous or later releases, it is necessary to purchase Product Updates and Support. There are no upgrade SKUs for Oracle so it is important to purchase support if either you or your customer needs access to a non-current edition. Product Updates and Support is a one year contract that may be purchased for the first year from Grey Matter. Renewals of the contract are handled directly by Oracle.
Please call Grey Matter on 01364 655129 if you would like us to provide a quote for installation and / or migration services.
Government
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Government pricing is subject to Oracle approval. Grey Matter is able to provide government pricing on a case-by-case basis.
Related Documents
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