Joel Kallman Day 2021: Oracle Database Express Edition (XE) 21c

The "Oracle Tech Network Appreciation Day" has been renamed to "Joel Kallman Day" in honor of Joel Kallman, who along with Mike Hichwa was one of the original developers of Oracle Application Express (APEX). Joel suddenly and tragically passed away during the pandemic earlier this year.

Joel at APEX World in Rotterdam, 2019

 

The "Joel Kallman Day" is about appreciating some piece of Oracle tech. In 2016, I wrote about the free Oracle Express Edition (XE) database. It just so happens that the latest Oracle XE version, 21c, was released for Linux a month ago, and for Windows just a few days ago.

Therefore, my blog post for Joel Kallman Day 2021 is about Oracle Express Edition, a great (and free!) way to get started with Oracle, PL/SQL, APEX and databases in general. You can download the software from oracle.com/xe and there's also docs and videos showing how to install and get started.

To give the new version a test drive, I created a Windows Server VM on Microsoft Azure, and then downloaded and installed XE 21c along with APEX and the Thoth Gateway for IIS.

The Azure VM size I selected for this test was "Standard B2s (2 vcpus, 4 GiB memory)". In Azure it costs about USD 40 per month.

Just for fun, here are some timings:

Time to...
... provision new VM in Azure: 5 minutes
... first login to VM: 2 minutes
... download a real browser: 1 minute
... download 21c XE: 30 seconds
... unzip 21c XE: 30 seconds
... install 21c XE: 15 minutes

... download APEX 21.1: 1 minute
... unzip APEX 21.1: 3 minutes
... install APEX 21.1: 8 minutes

... install IIS: 2 minutes
... install Thoth Gateway: 1 minute

... first login in APEX (total time): 39 minutes

Here's a screenshot showing APEX 21.1 in action on Oracle Database XE 21c on Windows Server 2019 with IIS and Thoth Gateway. The page rendering time is not too shabby! :-)

So, a big thanks to Oracle for providing a great, free database, and thanks to Joel and everybody on the APEX team for their excellent work. #letswreckthistogether

ODC Appreciation Day: The PL/SQL Language

Like last year, Tim Hall of oracle-base.com fame suggested we should all do an "ODC Appreciation Day" in honor of the Oracle Developer Community (ODC), by blogging about our favorite Oracle product or feature.

My personal favorite, after the database itself, is the PL/SQL language that runs inside the database.

Here's what's great about it:

• Simple (and therefore easy to understand and quick to learn)
• Runs everywhere the Oracle database runs (any operating system)
• Seamlessly integrated with SQL
• Great performance, not least because it runs in the database server alongside your data, thus eliminating a lot of mid-tier overhead 

I made a presentation a while back that goes into greater detail about what makes PL/SQL great, take a look at PL/SQL: The Good Parts.


Thanks ODC!

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! :-)