Oracle XE: The Free Database From Oracle

The title of this article must have surprised most of you. Oracle has been long known for providing robust industry standard databases. But its huge licensing cost has always been a deterrent for its use for small users such as shopkeepers or small firms. So, how come I have titled this article as free database from Oracle?

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is an entry-level, small-footprint database based on the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 code base that's free to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to download; and simple to administer.

Read on to find out more...

Oracle Help

There are a lot of resources on the web that claim to provide help regarding Oracle. However, only a few of them have exhaustive information about Oracle. Here, I have tried to point you to the most comprehensive websites to get help regarding Oracle. There are two websites that I like in particular:

1. Tahiti.Oracle.com : This is the complete online documentation of Oracle. It covers upto version 10 of Oracle. All the documentation is available in form of webpages as well as pdf. Also, there are a lot of books available freely.

2. Asktom.oracle.com : This website is maintained by the most knowledgeable person of Oracle, Tom Kyte. This website is more like a forum where users post their questions and Tom answers them. As there is just one person answering the questions, so it might take quite a long time before your question is answered. However, in most of the cases the problem is already faced by someone and you can use the readily available solution to that.

3. OTN (otn.oracle.com): Oracle Technology Network, or OTN is a central repository for lots of articles and white papers related to Oracle. I had missed out this site in my original list of sites, but Justin pointed this out to me. There are lots of resources for developers, including lots of downloadable tools and stuff. This place also helps you keep yourself abreast of all the new features coming up in ORACLE.

As all these websites are maintained by Oracle, so they are definitely most authoritative and complete help available for Oracle around.