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1. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Those are excellent news!
Just remember that south of the equator line we we are just starting the winter, so summer is still 6 months ahead
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2. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Fair enough! I should have said "later this summer on the northern hemisphere and where there is such a thing as summer."
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4. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Hello,
I'm very excited about upcomming Express Edition 18.
My wishes:
- Support more linux distributions, openSUSE.
- place the system settings inside /etc/sysctl.d/<file> the calculation (script) in XE11 didn't work correct for example in openSUSE.
- make clear statements in the documentation about licencing, for example
can i use it in virtualization envornments?
can i use ADDM, AWR, diagnostic and tuning, autospace advisor ect ? This is included in XE11 but not allowed (?)
Best regards.
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5. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Hello. Will Java be supported in this release of XE?
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6. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Thanks for your feedback oelk0,
Some of these we are planning on addressing, some of them might have to wait until 19c XE.
On the forefront we are working on making the licensing of XE even simpler as before.
All features in XE are allowed and free to use!
Thx,
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7. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Hello, Gerald Venzl-Oracle! Great to see you here!
Can you clarify some really important things about the future of XE releases?
We all know that 11g XE never received any patches and updates (even the security patches) and that was extremely frustrating for the community!
So, the question is - did Oracle change their policy here in 2k18? Are the new versions of XE (such as 18c XE) going to recieve updates and patches which improve user experience working with the DBMS (at least a minimal set of them fixing bugs and security issues)?
Maybe not patches, but new versions? Did the XE team developed some mechanisms to build new XE versions of Oracle Database continiously by clicking on a button (we are in the CI/CD era, you know) based on the most recent (or maybe not the very most, but current) revision of the EE of the DBMS?
What is the schedule for the upcoming XE versions? Will we see, let's say, 18c release 2, 19c, 19c release 2 and so on, let's say, every half a year like many vendors do these days? We understand that these new releases would contain much fewer changes, but still, we'd have actual versions of the DBMS in this fast-changing world.
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P.S. I think it would be really great to pin this thread.
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8. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Hi Denis,
The policy around patches has not changed, XE will not be patchable.
However, going forward there will be new versions of XE with every version of the Oracle Database.
Meaning that there will be a 19c XE, 20c XE, 21c XE and so forth, releasing annually alongside the SE2 and EE editions.
From that point of view users get a lot of features and fixes over a much shorter period of time than they used to.
Another big change to XE going forward is that we will include almost all Single Instance functionality so that the users get a fully capable Oracle Database with all the great features that make Oracle the #1 database on the planet.
It will be fully compatible with SE2 and EE so that a PDB from XE can, for example, just be unplugged and plugged into EE or the Oracle Cloud without any export/import, etc. required.
Fair enough, will pin the thread
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9. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
My wishes:
- Support more linux distributions, openSUSE.
- place the system settings inside /etc/sysctl.d/<file> the calculation (script) in XE11 didn't work correct for example in openSUSE.
- make clear statements in the documentation about licencing, for example
can i use it in virtualization envornments?
can i use ADDM, AWR, diagnostic and tuning, autospace advisor ect ? This is included in XE11 but not allowed (?)
1) Is that still an actual need in the times of VirtualBox and Docker containers? I.e. would it not be enough to just have it available inside a Docker container that can be run on openSUSE and Ubuntu?
2) This seems to be a derivative of 1, or?
3) We are actively working on making the licensing as simple and clear as possible
3b) You will be able to use everything that 18c XE ships and so are you in 11g XE. Why are you saying that you are not allowed to use these features?
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10. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
"You will be able to use everything that 18c XE ships and so are you in 11g XE. Why are you saying that you are not allowed to use these features?"
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17781_01/license.112/e18068/toc.htm#XELIC101
The following options and major features are not included with Oracle Database XE:
- Oracle Diagnostic Pack
- ....
- Oracle Tuning Pack
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/license.112/e47877/options.htm#DBLIC165
Oracle Diagnostics Pack includes the following features:
- Automatic Workload Repository
- Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM)
- Active Session History (ASH)
- Performance monitoring (database and host)
- Event notifications: notification methods, rules, and schedules
- Event history and metric history (database and host)
- Blackouts
- Dynamic metric baselines
- Monitoring templates
- Memory-access based performance monitoring
- Supporting functionality to perform per stream bottleneck detection and per component top wait event analysis
- Execution of the Real Application Testing 'Replay Compare Period Report'
Oracle Tuning Pack includes the following features:
- SQL Access Advisor
- SQL Tuning Advisor
- Automatic SQL Tuning
- SQL Monitoring
- Reorganize objects
It was always unclear because they were "included" as part of the software but they were not "included" in the license.
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11. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Gerald Venzl-Oracle wrote:
The policy around patches has not changed, XE will not be patchable.
However, going forward there will be new versions of XE with every version of the Oracle Database.
Meaning that there will be a 19c XE, 20c XE, 21c XE and so forth, releasing annually alongside the SE2 and EE editions.
From that point of view users get a lot of features and fixes over a much shorter period of time than they used to.
That is really good news that we're going to see a new version of XE every year, though I'd kindly suggest to review the bug/security issues policy for the XE.
I'll try to explain my thoughts here - the thing is that Express Edition of the Oracle Database is the first distribution a new customer (you can read a potential SE and EE customer) sees. It means, XE must make a good first impression on them.
Even when we negotiate the tools to be used to fulfil business requirements with new customers, the first thing we do - we offer the `free` version of the tool - XE. And then, if everything fine, and their business grows, they have an opportunity to upgrade to the full version of the DBMS. From this point of view XE has to be perfect, that's why I don't understand why Oracle is so strict about not updating the current version of XE. It could be not patches, but the new downloadable builds, at least (we'll sort out the upgrade process ourselves through reinstallation and data migration when it's needed, but right now we don't have even such an opportunity).
Gerald Venzl-Oracle, I am still asking you with respect to think a bit more about this.
I still vividly remember those desperate times when we only had 10g XE, which was extremely bugged. Oh dear, how glad I was when Oracle released the 11g XE.
Gerald Venzl-Oracle wrote:
Another big change to XE going forward is that we will include almost all Single Instance functionality so that the users get a fully capable Oracle Database with all the great features that make Oracle the #1 database on the planet.
It will be fully compatible with SE2 and EE so that a PDB from XE can, for example, just be unplugged and plugged into EE or the Oracle Cloud without any export/import, etc. required.
And this is a very nice thing to know.
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12. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Yes, Java will be part of XE going forward, too.
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13. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
None of these should have been included in the software itself, or if included, being made unusable. However, I haven't been around during the time of 11g XE.
What I can tell you is that going forward you will be able to use anything in XE that ships/works with it
We will make sure that the new license will avoid the confusion from 11g XE.
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14. Re: Hello, I'm the new product manager for Oracle Database XE
Hi Denis,
It is Oracle corporate policy (applying to all Oracle software) that only customers paying for support do get fixes. It would be unfair to these customers if others get support, i.e. patches for free while they pay for it. Regardless of what I think, this is corporate policy and we won't be able to be exempt from that, sorry. However, I don't think that this a unique policy to Oracle either. As a matter of fact we see that very often in the open-source space where users won't get any fixes unless you pay for a support subscription or compile and build the software themselves.
The good news is that there are a couple of things that have changed going forward, that will help you and the community more as it used to:
- As already mentioned earlier, we have yearly releases with XE as we do for SE2 and EE now. That is already a very big improvement over a 7 year release cycle that we have between 11g XE and 18c XE. Of course these yearly releases will include the latest and greatest but also fixes that have been made in between.
- Users have now a finer grained choice of which version to use. Say Oracle 19c XE is a great release that gives you everything you need for your tool, you might not have to upgrade to 20c XE if there is nothing new in there that you need, or if something might not work the way you need it for your tool. You can wait until 21c XE or maybe even 22c XE instead without having to sacrifice another 7 years. We will still see how many users will actually upgrade every year to the latest and greatest version. People have been asking for this but a lot of them then still only upgrade every 5 years because it is too much effort for them to do so more often. We will see whether the same thing happens with XE. I spend a lot of times telling people they should just upgrade because their issue is fixed in the new version and yet they still don't. Let's hope this won't happen with XE
- We strive to provide the best quality software on release as we can. Again, the yearly Database release model is a direct derivative of that and now XE also benefits of that.
- Of course the world has changed a lot between 2011 and 2018 and Oracle does now offer Oracle Database in the cloud as well, where people can sign up for a very low cost and start using the latest and greatest Oracle Database and get fixes without even having to apply them themselves. It is only legit to point out that perhaps some use cases, not saying yours of course, Denis, might be better served in the cloud going forward than with XE. In any case, we will continue to provide both because we like to give users choices.
Hope this helps!
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