Thursday, December 4, 2008

Free Oracle Development Tools

When you hear of Oracle, software with high price tags come to mind but in the last couple of years Oracle has been distributing some of their software out for free with no strings attached.

You can use the famous Oracle database engine for free, called Oracle XE (download here). Whats the catch? It only allows you a maximum of 4GB for your database size, which is ok for most small and medium sized business' applications.

Oracle also gives you their Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX) for free (download here). It allows a non-developer to automatically create a small/simple web-based application that can have data entry forms, reports, charts etc. It can only use Oracle databases though but you can use the Oracle XE database.

   


Another good free (please read below) tool is Oracle JDeveloper aimed at Java developers (download here).

A couple of years ago the above tools would cost you an arm and a leg. Due to immense competition from Open Source products and free offerings from companies like IBM, Microsoft etc., Oracle has also chosen to give out some of its applications out for free.

But do note that each one of their free software is designed to work with their own propriety technologies. This means that if in the future you needed more than 4GB for your database you will have to buy a license for a standard or enterprise version of Oracle database. The JDeveloper tools also rely heavily on Oracle based technologies like Oracle ADF. Chances are that you will have to buy a license for the Oracle Server when the time comes to deploy your application.

They are still trying to tie you into their products and make you dependant on Oracle. I do still recommend the use of
Oracle Application Express for small businesses. It will make their lives easy as it allows them to create small applications themselves.

Edited 23 Jan 2009: Although JDeveloper is free to download and use, its license is not meant for commercial use of an application built using JDeveloper. You will need to get commercial licenses from Oracle to distibute or sell commercial software.

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