Is Oracle Enterprise Edition Image Free to Download from Docker?

dockeroracle

I would like to learn more about Oracle (I am more of an SQL Server developer). I am thinking about downloading the Docker image: https://hub.docker.com/_/oracle-database-enterprise-edition?tab=reviews

I am a developer and this is strictly for learning purposes. I have read lots of other similar questions on here like this one: Is Oracle free to download? (dated 2013), however they are many years old. One of the answers in the question I have posted a link to says: "strictly self-educational purposes".

The reason I am concerned is because before downloading the image you have to supply a company name i.e. it is a mandatory field. There is no company because this is strictly for learning purposes and the reviewed comments on the Docker webpage are from "verified purchasers". I was thinking about downloading the express edition but some of the features I want to learn about are not available with the express edition.

Can I use the EE image for learning purposes?

Best Answer

Try downloading the official (example?) Docker image from Oracle.

Oracle has put many things on GitHub. Docker images are one of them.

https://github.com/oracle/docker-images/tree/master/OracleDatabase

Licensing questions are off topic for this site. But (AFAIK), for educational purpose only, you can use EE for free.

Related Solutions

Is Oracle free to download

If you're really only looking to learn about the development side and have no interest in the administration or installation side at the moment, a quicker route might be to download a prebuilt developer VM image for Virtualbox. That can get you up and running very quickly, and you can connect to the DB running inside the VM from outside, so you can continue to do your development in your current environment.

The overview echos what others have said about licensing kicking in once you ship an application (but Oracle licensing is a quagmire, you'll need to talk to Oracle about it if/when you get past playing around):

Learning your way around a new software stack is challenging enough without having to spend multiple cycles on the install process. Instead, we have packaged such stacks into pre-built Oracle VM VirtualBox appliances that you can download, install, and experience as a single unit. Just downloaded/assemble the files, import into VirtualBox (available for free), import, and go (but not for production use or redistribution)!

For experimenting it's ideal, in my experience. Of course, it's unsupported, but as you won't have a support contract anyway that's a bit of a moot point.

As David said, PL/SQL is integral to the database, not a separate component, so it is available in the VM image. You get some tools too, including SQL Developer, but you might have less friction running that natively and connecting it to the DB in the VM.

Oracle 12c Docker Connection – How to Connect Docker to Docker Oracle 12c

Make sure DB is up and running with status healthy
```
docker container ps
```
Make sure Oracle instant client is installed on host if trying to connect from host to containers via sqlplus or any 3rd party gui tools and set up connections in tnsnames.ora on host

3̶. S̶e̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶n̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶n̶s̶n̶a̶m̶e̶s̶.̶o̶r̶a̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶b̶o̶t̶h̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶a̶i̶n̶e̶r̶s̶.̶ (skip this step)

Make sure Oracle listener is up and running and you can find out services names on each containers by running the command
```
lsnrctl status 
```

You need to find out mapped ports. Execute command

docker port orcl

From my container the output is:

$ docker port orcl
1521/tcp -> 0.0.0.0:32769
5500/tcp -> 0.0.0.0:32768

You can connect directly from sqldeveloper or setup tns entries in tnsnames.ora for sqlplus client.

_{Here is the screenshot connecting from sqldeveloper}

For sqlplus client on host

#tnsname entry for container 1
orclcdb =
(DESCRIPTION =
  # host ipaddress and mapped port for 1521 is 32769
 (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = 192.168.56.101)(PORT = 32769))
 (CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVER = DEDICATED)
#service name from lsnrctl status command
(SERVICE_NAME = ORCLCDB.localdomain)
)
)

Verify tnsname entries with the command from host:
```
tnsping  orclcdb
```

Note

My setup was on Windows 10(host) and docker running on VM. I executed the following command to find the ipaddress of docker VM

Input:

docker-machine ls

Output:

Correction:

I didn't notice parameter -p 1521:1521 for the container start up command. That parameter exposes port 1521 for public. Just use container ipaddress(from docker-machine ls) and same port 1521 for sqlplus client connection from the host.