Question:

I'd really appreciate it if someone can clarify some of Oracle's licensing
to me.

Does named user license mean that I have to specify the actual name of the
person accessing the database to Oracle?  While purchasing?  People working
at our company change very frequently and I'm not sure I want to get into
this type of agreement if that's the case.

Also, most of the connections to the database at my company are from
software that are automated (getting data from one place, inserting it into
database, moving it, querying to create reports etc.).  How do I figure out
licenses for these?  And please don't say "power unit".  We'll have to
migrate to a different database from Oracle If that's the only way!  Can't
afford it.  I can buy a Sun Enterprise 4500 with 6 400 MHz CPUs for a little
over $100K but I'll have to pay Oracle $360K for the database!  Not counting
any options!

Thanks much
JK

Answer:

As far as i'm aware the licensing policy is 'concurrent user' not named user, so
providing you don't go over the number of users specified in your license you
should be OK...

Richard Sumption
------------------------------------------------
Oracle Technology Consultant
ITRS Limited
[email protected]