OTN Appreciation Day: Oracle Express Edition (XE)

Tim Hall of oracle-base.com fame suggested we should all do an "OTN Appreciation" day in honor of the Oracle Technology Network (OTN), by blogging about our favorite Oracle product or feature.


My personal favorite is Oracle Express Edition (XE), the free version of the world's best relational database.

 Here's what's great about it:

• Available for both Windows and Linux at the OTN website
• Easy to install (InstallShield on Windows, rpm package on Linux), only takes a few minutes
• Lightweight, requires very little resources to run
• Great performance
• Comes preinstalled with APEX on it
• It's free for any usage, including production applications

Oracle Express Edition is currently available in version 11gR2 (11.2). Based on hints dropped by various folks at Oracle, there will be a 12c version of Oracle XE, but it is probably a year or two away yet.

The XE documentation is a great starting point for those new to Oracle, with several "2-day guides" to database administration and development tasks.

Enjoy Oracle XE and #ThanksOTN for this great product! :-)