Things to watch out for in moving from Oracle Express to the Real Deal?

Question

I'm writing an application which needs to work on an Oracle DB, we don't have an Oracle Db but our client does, so I've been developing/testing it using Oracle Express.

Are there anythings I should watch out for in moving from the free version that might break my app when I run it against the Full fat edition?

Answer 1

Not really. The only things I can think of that might bite you:

• Have you only been testing locally (i.e. code + db on the same machine)? Networking should only be a configuration issue, but its worth bearing in mind to avoid any deployment worries.
• Is the full fat edition on the version and point release? If not, check the release notes for the differences. Probably will not matter to you.
• Theoretically, you might want to watch for the version capabilities, but this should not apply in this case, since S1/S/E have everything XE has.

Other than that, different editions of the same version should be functionally identical.

Answer 2

Depends on the version of the 'full fat' edition. If they are still on the old, Oracle 9i/9iR2/10gR1 versions, you may have issues if you've used functionality from 10gR2. Apex isn't installed by default before 11g but can be added. The embedded pl/sql gateway isn't available on non-XE 10gR2. If you don't know what either of those two are, then it won't affect you.

XE also applied stricter security controls over database to internet connections (google NETWORK_ACL) which didn't get applied to the full-fat editions until 11g.

Answer 3

Most of these have to do with the deployment:

1. The codepage differences.
2. 10g / 11g / 9i / 8i ... version differences, you may be using something specific that is not supported by earlier versions (AFAIK, XE is 10g).
3. Network/tnsnames.ora/sqlnet.ora
4. expdp/impdp or exp/imp, and the different options.

You're not forced to use XE for development, Oracle also allows a development license, so you could run any edition or feature set (even Enterprise or RAC) if you only use it for development, and don't use it in production, they say on the OTN downloads page: All software downloads are free, and each comes with a Development License that allows you to use full versions of the products at no charge while developing and prototyping your applications (or for strictly self-educational purposes), unless you're using XE on a laptop, or a low-powered VM, I'd go for the enterprise edition on a $300 PC on Linux (Centos?).