Introduction to Oracle Database XE (Express Edition) 11g

Oracle Database XE (Express Edition) 11g is a free version of Oracle Database from Oracle corporation  which has functional capability equivalent to Oracle Database 11g R2 paid version. All of the features available in the Oracle DB paid version are available on Oracle DB XE, apart from that Oracle DB XE comes with an integrated development tools Oracle Application Express (APEX). Oracle DB XE can be downloaded for free from the Oracle website, the size of the installer file is relatively not too big which is about 320MB. Oracle DB XE 11g features a GUI (Graphical User Interface) interface for interaction and administration of content and objects. Apart from the GUI interface, the administration of Oracle DB XE 11g can also be done from the console prompt (SQL Prompt).

On the official website of Oracle (www.oracle.com) it says It's free to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to download; and simple to administer that indicates that Oracle DB XE is completely free and legal version to use even for commercial purposes. The current version of Oracle Database Express Edition is version 11g (Oracle DB XE 11g) which is equivalent to Oracle DB 11g R2 (paid). Oracle Database XE functionality has no difference with Oracle Database paid version, different is the limitation in terms of ability and specification (no restriction only limitation). Oracle DB XE 11g is equipped with application development feature of Application Express (APEX) version 4.0.2, this feature allows users to create web applications that are integrated with Oracle Database XE.

The restriction that exists on Oracle Database XE is only allowed to operate on a computer with 1 processor with 1GB of RAM memory. In Oracle DB XE 10g the maximum data that can be stored in the database is 4 GB (pure data outside the system data) and on the version of Oracle DB XE 11g maximum data that can be stored is 11GB. Oracle DB XE 11g can be installed on linux and windows operating system, for windows there are 32bit and 64 bit versions whereas for linux there is only 64bit version.

Oracle Database XE 11g can be installed on linux and windows operating system, in this article the operating system used is Microsoft Windows 7 32bit. The first thing that needs to be done with Oracle DB XE is doing 4 basic things that are fundamental. The four fundamental basic things are the installation of Oracle Database 11g XE, user management, DDL (Data Definition Language) and DML (Data Manipulation Language).

Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a development tool for building web applications using Oracle database as base storage. APEX is already integrated on Oracle DB XE, but APEX can also be installed independently against the paid DB version of Oracle DB. APEX can also be upgraded, the latest version at the time this article is written is APEX 5.1.4. APEX is a development tool with GUI interface (Graphical User Interface) which facilitate the developer by giving the illustration in the form of image icon on its components, this makes the programmer just do a little hard of coding activities.

In order to learn Oracle APEX, readers need to learn the basic science of web programming plus some material around the database. HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL, PL/SQL are the components that need to be learned if we are going to create an app with Oracle APEX.

Thank You - Bobsis