Re: oracle licensed per instance?

susana73_at_hotmail.com (Susan Lam) wrote in message news:<7186ed56.0208272020.a5e02ef_at_posting.google.com>...
> I talked to the Oracle sales he says Oracle licenses per instance per
> user. This means, if I have 4 instances on a server and userA need to
> access 3 of them, userA counted as 3 licenses. Speed and number of
> cpu will also take into consideration. Can somebody tell me if this
> true?
>
> Thanks,
> Susan

CPU speed and number was how Oracle was selling licenses a couple of years ago, but now you either buy a named user license or a per cpu license. If you buy per CPU then the number of users/instances on that machine does not matter.

If you purchased named user licenses then the above may be true, but how are the users connecting, separately to each database or via distributed queries? With the standard edition the distributed option is an add on purchase, while I believe this feature is included in the EE edition, so how the customers are accessing the data may also affect how your licenses work.

And I hate to say this but based on personal experience Oracle sales sometimes gives out wrong information, or people sometimes misunderstand what sales is saying. Considering you mentioned speed counting in the cost I suggest you visit the online store at www.oracle.com and look for licensing information. There should be a description of your licensing options available there.

Also another complication is if you have a pre-existing license from several years ago since it could involve concurrent user licenses, which are no longer sold and have to be converted.

Oracle has changed it's licensing polices in the past and may have changed it again so I could be wrong but the web site should have current information.

HTH -- Mark D Powel -- Received on Wed Aug 28 2002 - 08:17:14 CDT