"I am the OMCS Client Manager for <redacted>. They are currently a large Discoverer customer who would like to convert to Oracle APEX. To that goal, they have asked me to find out how long Oracle APEX will continue to be a no-cost feature of the Oracle Database (could be an unanswerable question, I realize)."Great question! And my response to Tom:
- Oracle Application Express has been an included feature of the Oracle Database since 2004. It remains an included feature of the Oracle Database in 12cR2 and in the foreseeable future.
- There are no plans to charge separately for Oracle Application Express. It has *never* been discussed.
- Application Express is a feature of every Oracle Database Cloud Service (Database Schema Cloud Service, Database Cloud Service, Exadata Express, Exadata Service)
- In my 21 year career at Oracle, I have never seen a situation where Oracle has included something as part of the database license and then decided later to charge separately for it. It might have happened, but I'm not aware of it. I have seen the reverse (where we used to charge a separate license fee, and then eventually included it with the Oracle Database - Oracle Text is a good example).
People often classify APEX as "free". I call it "an included feature of the Oracle Database." If you're licensed and supported for the Oracle Database, you're licensed and supported for Oracle Application Express. APEX runs wherever the Oracle Database runs - on premises, your cloud, Oracle Cloud. We have customers running APEX on a laptop on the free version of the Oracle Database Express Edition (XE), we have customers running APEX on 28-node Oracle RAC clusters, and everything in-between.
If you're interested in learning more about APEX, see A Simple Guide to Oracle Application Express (APEX).
8 comments:
"In my 21 year career at Oracle, I have never seen a situation where Oracle has included something as part of the database license and then decided later to charge separately for it."
Streams > GoldenGate
Change Data Capture > GoldenGate
Strictly speaking, that is not the same "something" included, then charged separately - if "something" = implementation of the solution.
However, if "something" means functionality, then a functionality that was included is now charged separately.
The same applies to Oracle Warehouse Builder:
OWB > ODI
IMHO, the statement "I have never seen a situation where Oracle has included something as part of the database license and then decided later to charge separately for it" might be true in the verbatim sense, but it certainly isn't 100% accurate.
Frank - thanks for the feedback. However, that's a bit of a stretch. OWB basic ETL was eventually included with the database, but anything beyond that was separately licensed.
Stew - your example may be closer, as Streams was included with the DB and then eventually superseded.
I can give reverse examples of where something was separately licensed and then included with the database - Oracle Text, Oracle Multimedia, Oracle Locator...Oracle even used to charge separately for SQL*Plus! Now all part of the Oracle Database.
But none of this should distract from my primary sentiment and the purpose of this blog post - there is no desire to charge separately for Oracle APEX, and it has never been discussed.
Back in 2002, many folks told us we were making a mistake by not charging for APEX - that there would be no perceived value if it was included with the database. Fast forward to 2017, and everyone expects tools and frameworks to be "free", especially in an era of very advanced open source frameworks being released quite frequently. We made the correct decision.
Regarding OWB: I disagree. For one of our customers, *the* selling point for OWB was that the basic version (which was perfectly sufficient for their needs) was included in DB version 11 at no additional cost. Now, the only migration path offered by Oracle is ODI, at prohibitive extra licensing costs.
Regarding APEX: I agree completely - it's great that it is included with the database, and I hope it will continue this way.
When do you have to pay for APEX? Let's say you build a reporter on your database using apex and your client have access to that reporter do you have to pay anything additional for it?
Hi Marcos,
There are no license-imposed limits on the number of developers of APEX applications, nor are there any license-imposed limits on the number of end users of an APEX application. It's all included with your database license. About the only caveat I can think of is if you have a named-user license for the database (which almost no one does any more), then I imagine the named-user limit would come into play.
I hope this helps.
Joel
Hello Joel
Had a question on the usage of Oracle APEX in Production Database. One of my customers do not have current Oracle Database license i.e. no longer using Oracle support. Based on the conversations exchanged on this blog, it looks like this customer shall be non-compliant or violating if they try to implement Oracle APEX in Production without proper service agreement.
Can you please share some valuable feedback?
Thanks in advance
RAOSSD
RAOSSD,
Licensed and supported are two different things. If they have a valid license for Oracle Database, then they have a valid license for APEX. And let’s not forget that there is a free, unsupported version of Oracle Database called XE. You can use APEX in XE as well, and at no cost.
Joel
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