Introducing Oracle - Oracle Essentials - page 8

Oracle Standard Edition
Oracle's database intended for small- and medium-sized implementations. This
database can be deployed onto server configurations containing up to 4 CPUs on
a single system or on a cluster using Real Application Clusters (RAC).
Oracle Standard Edition One
Designed for small implementations, this database can support up to 2 CPUs and
does not support RAC. The feature list is otherwise similar to Oracle Standard
Edition.
Oracle Personal Edition
Database used by single developers to develop code for implementation on Oracle
multiuser databases. It requires a license, unlike Express Edition, but gives you the
full Enterprise Edition set of functionality.
Oracle Express Edition
Entry-level database from Oracle available at no charge for Windows and Linux
and unsupported as a product, this database is limited to 1 GB of memory and 4
GB of disk. It provides a subset of the functionality in Standard Edition One, lacking
features such as a Java Virtual Machine, server-managed backup and recovery, and
Automatic Storage Management. Although this database is not manageable by
Oracle Enterprise Manager, you can deploy it for and manage multiple users
through the Oracle Application Express administration interface.
Oracle releases new versions of the flagship database every three to five years. New
releases typically follow themes and introduce a significant number of new features. In
recent releases, these themes are indicated in the product version naming. In 1998,
Oracle announced Oracle8 i , with the “ i ” added to denote new functionality supporting
Internet deployment. Oracle9 i continued using this theme. In 2003, Oracle announced
Oracle Database 10 g , with the “ g ” denoting Oracle's focus on emerging grid computing
deployment models, then announced Database 11 g with further improvements in man‐
ageability in 2007. In 2012, Oracle announced Oracle Database 12 c , the “ c ” denoting
new database functionality supporting Cloud deployment. In between major versions,
Oracle issues point releases that also add features but are more typically focused on
improvements to earlier capabilities.
The terms “Oracle,” “Oracle Database,” “database,” “Oracle8,” “Oracle8 i ,” “Oracle9 i ,”
“Oracle Database 10 g ,” “Oracle Database 11 g ,” and “Oracle Database 12 c ” might appear
to be used somewhat interchangeably in this topic because Oracle Database 12 c includes
all the features of previous versions. When we describe a new feature that was first made
available specifically in a certain release, we've tried to note that fact to avoid confusion,
recognizing that many of you maintain older releases of Oracle. We typically use the
simple terms “Oracle” and “database” when describing features that are common to all
these releases.