RE: Oracle license requirements for unused options

From: <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 13:56:37 +0100
Message-ID: <919FC80F27E0C6428106496EDF92A7521262082B_at_EXCCLUS05.PRODDS.NTNL>

Richard,

>> .... they are used by Oracle for their internal purposes.
Partitioning in
>> Enterprise Edition comes immediately to mind. You must
>> install it and you can't deinstall it because some of the internal
sys objects are
>> partitioned which a check of a 11.1.0.7.0 EE database shows:

Have you checked DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS for partitioning?

SQL> select name
  2 from DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS
  3 where name like 'Partitioning%'

NAME

---

Partitioning (system)
Partitioning (system)
Partitioning (user)
Partitioning (user)

There are two separate partitioning "options" in a 10g database. I have no idea why there are duplicates! Might be a separate "incarnation" of the database. I'll check the DBID later.

>> TABLE_OWNER COUNT(*)
>> ------------------------------ ----------
>> MDSYS 2
>> SYSTEM 38
>> SYS 220
So the ones you have listed in the above query will be Partitioning (system) usage. On my 10g database I see this:

SQL> select banner from v$version;

BANNER

---

Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Prod PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production
CORE 10.2.0.4.0 Production
TNS for Linux: Version 10.2.0.4.0 - Production NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.4.0 - Production

As you can see, nothing there mentions the Partitioning option, but ...

SQL> select owner,count(*)
  2 from dba_tables
  3 where partitioned = 'YES'
  4 group by owner;

OWNER                            COUNT(*)
------------------------------ ----------
SYSTEM                                 27
SYS                                    23

And querying DBA_ shows this for partitioning:

SQL> select dbid, name, detected_usages, currently_used   2 from DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS
  3 where name like 'Partitioning%';

      DBID NAME                  DETECTED_USAGES CURRE
---------- --------------------- --------------- -----
3189876621 Partitioning (system)               31 TRUE
3189876621 Partitioning (system)              151 TRUE
3189876621 Partitioning (user)                  0 FALSE
3189876621 Partitioning (user)                  0 FALSE

(I have even less ideas about the duplicates now!)

>> Now they definitely can't make you pay for an option that you're not
>> using, but they are.

I have also mentioned that when I patched a database from 10.2.0.x to a later 10.2 release, various options that I explicitly did not install - data mining, OLAP etc - were reinstated after the patching.

And, when we were audited (in a past life), Oracle Licensing *were* and indeed *did* attempting to charge us for options installed regardless of use.

Cheers,
Norm.

Norman Dunbar
Contract Senior Oracle DBA
Capgemini Database Team (EA)
Internal : 7 28 2051
External : 0113 231 2051

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Received on Wed May 18 2011 - 07:56:37 CDT