Can anyone point me to information on Oracle server licensing?  I find
the whole thing pretty confusing.  How can you tell how many licenses
you are using.  We've run the recommended scripts, and Oracle Corp has
run them too, as well as making some assumptions regarding web access to
our db.  Needless to say our results differ by over 1000.

Look in the alert.log file at shutdown - it gives the user conncurrent
connection highwater mark.

Note that Oracle licences on number of concurrent users * number of CPU's +
support costs * number of users *  <variable_percentage> +
<how_much_can_they_afford>

The V$LICENSE table gives the following info as well:

Sessions_Max  --  max # of sessions allowed (license_max_sessions in
init.ora).

Sessions_Warning  --  # of sessions that will cause a warning message
to be written into the alert log (license_sessions_warning in
init.ora).

Sessions_Current  --  current # of sessions connected.

Sessions_HighWater  --  max # of sessions at any one time (since last
db restart).

Users_Max  --  max # of user accounts allowed (license_max_users from
init.ora).

Chris

Can someone give me an idea of how much negotiating power I have when
talking to Oracle reps regarding licensing.  I talked to my rep and he told
me that the cost is 1,495 for a one seat license + 360.00 per year support.
There is no way we can pay this kind of money.  Is this what everyone else
is paying?  To say the least, I do not trust sales people to tell me the
whole story for obvious reasons.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, those sound like the numbers we experience, but you must realize
that there is a flexible total cost that depends on volume (dolar wise)
discounts.  Also Oracle usual calls a "seat" a concurrent user. So if you
have 10,000 people but only 1000 are actually using oracle at a given
moment, then you would normally need just 1000 licenses.  However the
determination of actual average concurrent use is very difficult.

It is best to attempt to negotiate with oracle in good faith, and I believe
you will find them to be willing to talk provided the total cost of
negotiation is sufficiently high overall.

But to actually answer your question, yes those are our costs too.  In
fact I think our maintenance maybe even higher tahn $360.00?

Oracle may, like many other software companies, also have an academic
pricing schedule, check it out?

Are you trying to get a single seat license?  If this is the case, have you
looked at Personal Oracle?  There may be something called PO Lite as well, I
haven't checked in awhile.  But I am using Personal Oracle.

Also, if you have a smaller system, make sure you discuss the Workgroup
Server version, not the Enterprise version.  We are running the Workgroup
Server version, with a 40 seat license, and it was pretty reasonable (about
3 years ago).   The Workgroup Server has some limitations, but it does
everything we need.

Regards,  Rich Dolan

Reply:

Was that WorkGroup license bundled with a application that it (Oracle)
can not be used for anything else than that particular application's
operation?

I'm looking at an application that uses Oracle as the back-end (data
store). It comes bundled with an Oracle 7.3.4.x WorkGroup license.
With this licnese I can't use it for anything else other than this
application's operation. Is that the case with your WorkGroup license
or is it something else, like the number of seats, that differentiate
between WorkGroup vs Enterprise?

It sure is like having a root canal when talking to a rep ... I at
least got a similar number to what Lisa posted for the Enterprise
license (unofficial & it's Q4 @ Oracle <g>) but couldn't get a figure
on how much credit I would get for turning in the WorkGroup license so
it will be an upgrade from WorkGroup to Enterprise :-(