Oracle to charge extra for four key 11g database features

IDG News Service - Oracle Corp. today detailed the pricing of its Oracle Database 11g software, disclosing that some of the most talked-about features in the new release will be sold as extra-cost add-ons.

When the vendor announced the 11g version of its flagship database in New York just over a month ago, company executives spoke at length about new functionality but didn't address pricing.

Now Oracle is confirming that the basic price of the Enterprise, Standard and Standard Edition One versions of 11g will be unchanged from the cost of its previous 10g database. For example, 11g Enterprise is priced at $40,000 per processor or $800 per named user, Oracle said today.

Pricing will also remain the same for a variety of optional add-ons that Oracle offers for the Enterprise version of the database, including its Real Application Clusters, Content Database Suite, Database Vault and Oracle Data Mining technologies.

As part of the 11g launch, Oracle is debuting four new add-ons that were among the highlighted features at the product announcement in July. The company said its Real Application Testing and Advanced Compression options cost $10,000 per processor or $200 per named user, while its Total Recall and Active Data Guard technologies are priced at $5,000 per processor or $100 per named user.

According to Oracle, the Real Application Testing tool enables users to record portions of their real-life database operations for use in testing how well their applications will run on the new database -- potentially reducing the time and money that companies have to spend setting up testbeds for assessing application compatibility.

The company claims that the new compression option can compact data so it occupies two to three times less disk space than was possible with 10g. Meanwhile, Total Recall lets database administrators query historical information held in their databases, a capability designed for use in monitoring changes to data for auditing and regulatory compliance purposes.

And the Active Data Guard tool lets users offload resource-hungry operations, such as queries and data backups, to standby databases. Companies could use that technology in disaster recovery situations and to help improve the performance of key databases, according to Oracle.

New functionality that is built into 11g includes improved security, storage and data warehousing capabilities, the vendor has said. Oracle has already begun shipping a version of 11g for x86-based systems running Linux, and users can download a free evaluation version of the database from the company's Web site.