Re: Oracle licensing

On Thu, 29 Apr 1999 16:45:03 -0400, Stan Novinsky <stan_novinsky_at_jhuapl.edu> wrote:

>Here's one of the age-old questions: what constitutes a User and what
>constitutes a client?
>
>Does one SQLnet connection to the server database count towards a "User
>License" ?

I don't know the answer to your question, but Oracle licensing can seem like voodoo economics sometimes. Here is a true, and somewhat humorus anecdote. This is something I went through earlier this year:

I have a client implementing a dial-up voice-response system to allow people to call in, enter their ID number, and get back their account balance. The system is implemented on OS/2. My client is licensed for 200+ Windows 95 users.

I asked Oracle if we could just count the OS/2 app as a user. Answer: No, because OS/2 is a different OS.

Then I asked Oracle what it would cost to buy 12 client licenses for the OS/2 machine. There were 12 phone lines you see. Oracle's first response was that I had to purchase a license for every possible user. Yeah right! My client was a fairly large city, and the customer base was everyone in the city. Like h--- they were going to buy 2 million client licenses for a 12-line phone system.

The whole thing ultimately hinged on whether or not the 13th caller got a busy signal or was routed to some kind of queue. When I assured the Oracle rep that the 13th caller would get a busy signal, he finally agreed that we could go with a 12 user client license.

go figure!

Jonathan

p.s. All in all, it took me two months of elapsed time, and I never, ever was able to get a dollar quote from Oracle for this. I finally had to pass the problem on to someone else, and I don't believe it is resolved to this day. I bet if I dialed up Microsoft, and asked about a 12 user license fo SQL-Server, that it would be a 5 minute question. Received on Fri Apr 30 1999 - 21:11:13 CDT