Oracle licences, when is a single user a single user?

I'm trying to work this out with Oracle but was wondering in others have been through this routine.

I have developed a web interface for a database project using Oracle as the backend. It uses apache/Jserv (yes I know Oracle have a webserver but at the moment I am familiar with Apache)

I can configure the system so that it only permits x simultaneous connections to Oracle. (still testing this thoroughly but so far it seems solid)

As I understand a single user licence permits one user at a time to access Oracle database. Most network installations provide for licence sharing. (ie 100 users, 10 licences for software X, licence sharing results in only 10 people at a time using the licences)

It gets a bit complicated since my system only grabs the "single user licence" when a user presses a submit button to process a query. Since the DBMS takes milliseconds to process most queries, a "single user" licence could concievably support many users.

Oracle dont seem "happy" with the concept.

Any advice? I dont want to get on the wrong side of licencing but the system will not have the user load to justify a MHz rating style license. (currently expecting <5 simultaneous users, potentially 100-200 different users over a week.)

The arguement is prol redundant since when the system is put into production it will be sitting on an existing server with existing Oracle licence. At the moment I am working in off line development mode.

Mat Received on Wed Jun 21 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT