Oracle XE 12c becomes Oracle XE 18c

Oracle Database, Express Edition (XE) is a free version of the Oracle Database, currently available as version 11g (11.2) for Windows and Linux.

A planned new version of Oracle XE based on 12c (12.2) was first mentioned back in 2013. Now we are in 2017 and Oracle has changed its version numbering, aiming for yearly releases of the database, which means that after 12c comes 18c (in 2018) and 19c (in 2019) and so on.

According to information coming out at this year's Oracle OpenWorld, the next version of Oracle Database Express Edition (XE) will therefore be Oracle XE 18c.

Below are the details known so far about this upcoming version. Disclaimer: I've collected this information from tweets and blogs, so nothing is official yet. Time will tell as to what is true. UPDATE: Gerald Venzl from Oracle has confirmed the below to be "all true" :-)

• The next version of Oracle Express Edition (XE) will be 18c. (Source: Chris Saxon, Twitter)
• Oracle XE 18c is expected in Q1 of 2018. (Source: AMIS blog). UPDATE: Oracle XE 18c "is currently planned between March and August 2018 and might change". (Source: Gerald Venzl, Twitter)
• There will be yearly releases of Oracle Express Edition (XE), ie Oracle XE 19c in 2019, etc. (Source: Franck Pachot, Twitter).
• There will be simultaneous releases of XE for Linux and Windows. (Source: Gerald Venzl, Twitter)
• Limits for XE 18c will be 2 GB of memory, 12GB of storage (with basic/advanced compression bringing real capacity up to around 40GB), 2 CPUs and 4 pluggable databases. (Source: AMIS blog and Lucas Jellema, Twitter)
• Express Edition (XE) will actually include "nearly all" of the features from Enterprise Edition (EE)! (Source: Franck Pachot, Twitter and Chris Saxon, Twitter).
• Express Edition (XE) will still be free for both development and production. (Source: Chris Saxon, Twitter).
• There will be no support (except through community/forums) for XE, and no bug fixes/patches. Still, with a yearly release cycle that means bugs will be fixed by upgrading to the latest release. (Source: Franck Pachot and Bob Bryla, Twitter)

If most, or even some, of the above is true, this is really great news! I understand we should thank Gerald Venzl at Oracle for this, as he is the guy working on bringing us all this goodness! Thanks in advance, Gerald! :-)

First mentions of Oracle 12c XE (Express Edition)

Oracle released an Express Edition (XE) of its 10g database back in 2005 or thereabouts, and this was later followed up by an Oracle 11g Express Edition database.

Oracle XE is great because it is lightweight and "free to develop, deploy and distribute". Dietmar Aust has posted a thorough clarification on XE licensing, where representatives from Oracle have confirmed that XE is indeed free. (The post also includes some good security advice in the comments.) Oracle XE has its limitations, but I've previously posted some performance benchmarks for Oracle XE, which shows that it is more than good enough for many use cases.

Back to the topic of this post... during the Q&A part of the "Oracle Database 12c Launch Webcast" there were several questions about a 12c version of XE:

Will there be an Oracle 12c Express Edition? It is planned, but there are no dates yet.

Is there an Express edition of 12c available? Planned, but no dates yet.

Will 12c be available for Express Edition? If so, schedule? Planned but no dates yet.

So basically, we now know that there will be an Oracle 12c Express Edition coming out, but we have no idea when. Hopefully it won't take 5-6 years, like the wait between 10g and 11g... (and when it arrives it will probably be for 64-bit Windows, which was promised for XE 11g, but which never materialized UPDATE: Oracle XE 11g for 64-bit Windows was released in June 2014).

But hey, it's free, and it's a great product, so it will be worth the wait! :-)

Interesting PL/SQL and Apex links, April 2012

Here's a bunch of interesting stuff related to PL/SQL and Apex that I've come across lately, I'm posting it both as a reminder to myself, and to help spread the word:

• First mention of PL/SQL enhancements for Oracle Database 12c: In his PL/SQL newsletter for March 2012, Steven Feuerstein revealed that "I've also started beta testing Oracle Database 12c PL/SQL. I can't yet share with you any of the new features, but I can tell you that PL/SQL will certainly be a richer, more usable language when 12c goes production!".
• On that topic, a couple of things I personally would like to see in future PL/SQL include a UTL_FILE.LIST_FILES function that would list the files in a specified directory (without having to resort to unsupported features or workarounds in Java), a DBMS_JSON package for parsing and generating JSON (similar to PL/JSON, but built-in), and the ability to use FUNCTIONs as variables and parameters, like you can in JavaScript.
• PL/SQL rises strongly in the TIOBE ranking: I don't really care about or trust the TIOBE rankings, as the results tend to vary wildly from month to month and year to year, but it's nice to see PL/SQL climbing from 24th place to 12th place over the last year. (Then again, if you look at the chart, it appears that PL/SQL was popular in 2007/2008, then not popular in 2009, fairly popular in 2010, not popular in 2011, and rising sharply in popularity again in 2012. In other words it's seemingly popular every other year... so take these rankings and the methodology used with a grain of salt.)

• PL/SQL syntax highlighting in JavaScript: CodeMirror is a JavaScript component that provides a code editor in the browser, which happens to support PL/SQL syntax highlighting.
• Improved PDF package for PL/SQL: Anton Scheffer has improved his package that generates PDF documents from PL/SQL. It's now in version 3 (AS_PDF3) and supports TrueType fonts and automatic headers/footers.
• Flexible document workflow in Apex: Michelle Skamene describes a simple but flexible design to handle document workflows in Apex. Based on a table and a dynamic PL/SQL region, it allows users to define and change workflow rules.