Written by: Graham Keitch
Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:33:28 GMT 

The majority of Oracle developer tools are free.  So too are developer licenses for most of Oracle’s database and middleware technologies.  That said, Oracle does apply some strict definitions around ‘development’.   The free development licenses and the terms that govern their use can be found here.  In a nutshell, Oracle ‘grants you a nonexclusive, non transferable limited license to use the programs only for the purpose of developing, testing, prototyping and demonstrating your application’.  Here it says that testing is permitted but some Oracle documents seem to suggest otherwise.  The weighty Oracle Software Investment Guide tells us that a full license is required for testing but I think the intention here is to describe testing in a production-ready or post-deployment environment as opposed to on an isolated development machine.  This makes sense because even in the development phase, robust and reliable testing would ideally involve a ‘real-life’ production workload.  Testing is also likely to be an on-going process after your system has gone live and Oracle provides tools to facilitate the capture of a live workload for testing changes.  So yes, in this situation full licenses are clearly required.
 
The general consensus seems to be that the free licenses permit testing in the context of an evaluation or proof of concept exercise.  Testing to support a production environment or existing commercial activity requires a full license.  I may have opened a can of worms here as there are many shades of grey between a standalone development machine and the roll-out of a live commercial system.   Likewise, between a completely new commercial activity and one that extends or interfaces with something already used to run the business. 

Come to think of it, what's ‘testing’ anyway?   Are we talking about monitoring code integrity during execution or an end-user examining some output that tells us it’s Wednesday today when it’s actually Friday?  I wish I hadn’t started this – but I will attempt to come up with some specific examples that will help you determine when you need to build ‘license procurement’ into the project timeline.   Meanwhile, feel free to let me know if you wish to discuss your own particular situation as this will nearly always be something that has to be resolved on a case by case basis.   

Copyright ©2010 Graham Keitch

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