Licensing continues to “uninterest” me

I am spending more and more time lately reading the writings of others in the Oracle technology space. Many of those readings start by following a link posted on the Oracle-L list.

Today’s linkfest led me to a great Open Letter to Larry Ellison on AWR and ASH Licensing by Mark Brinsmead. I first had to understand the issue as I’ve made it a high priority to learn as little about Oracle Licensing as possible. Right or wrong, I’ve continued to contend that it seems to change week-to-week and there’s at least a full-time job to just keep up with the changes.

Anywho, the issue is that in order to have any interaction with the Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM), Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) or Active Session History (ASH), you must license the Enterprise Manager Diagnostic Pack. (Don’t believe me?) This pack is licensed on top of your database license and currently lists for $60 per named user or $3,000 per processor.

As you’ll find linked in the open letter posting above, I found more interesting reading in this area in a few articles, one by Jared Still on DBAzine.com, and from last year, another by Jonathan Lewis.

While there was no interest in licensing that could be “sparked” by this new finding, I do like to help customers (and my own employer) stay in compliance with licensing restrictions, so this is good to know. I’d encourage you to add your name to the list of signatories on Mark’s open letter.