Good news from Oracle !

Last week, I have received some good news from Oracle that I would like to share with you all.

Oracle 18c Express Edition (XE) for Windows has been released!

Oracle 18c XE for Windows (x64) has been released last week. Oracle 18c XE for Linux has been already released late 2018. Oracle XE is free to develop, deploy, and distribute.
You can download it from oracle.com/xe

What is included?

(from oracle.com/xe)

Multitenant: Get isolation, agility, and economies of scale by managing multiple Pluggable Databases inside your Oracle Multitenant Container Database

In-Memory: Support real-time analytics, business intelligence, and reports by keeping your important data in the Oracle Database In-Memory column store

Partitioning: Enhance performance, availability, and manageability of your database with data partitioning that meets diverse business requirements

Advanced Analytics: Get valuable insights and deliver predictions from your data using Data Mining SQL, R programming, and the Oracle Data Miner UI

Advanced Security: Protect your sensitive data at the source and build end-to-end encrypted apps with layers of security including Oracle Transparent Data Encryption and Data Redaction

Resources:

Up to 12 GB of user data
Up to 2 GB of database RAM
Up to 2 CPU threads
Up to 3 Pluggable Databases

Happy experimenting!

SYS will no longer be required to install ORDS!

ORDS 19.1 will not require SYS access to install and validate ORDS. This might not be important to many APEX developers, but for those who use Oracle APEX on managed databases like AWS RDS (Oracle), this is really great news. Before this change, AWS RDS Oracle's "master user" could not complete ORDS installation specifically at the step that prompts for SYS credentials to install and validate RESTful services. The only possible option was to skip that step, and therefore, do not get full ORDS experience in AWS RDS.

I have not experimented Oracle Cloud, but I assume it probably has the same issue as I expect Oracle Cloud not to give users SYS access. Maybe your Oracle Cloud instance will come with APEX/ORDS pre-installed and fully managed by Oracle, but you might not be able to re-install or upgrade manually. Again, I am not sure about Oracle Cloud, so I am just making assumptions based on my understanding of limited privileges that come with managed databases in general.

Last week, I have been told by one of Oracle's principal product managers that SYS access won't be required in ORDS 19.1, which I believe is a great step in the right direction in order to make it easier for customers to migrate their on-prem APEX applications to AWS (and cloud in general). So, now I am on standby, waiting for ORDS 19.1 to be released so I can try it out in AWS RDS. Thank you Oracle for listening to your developer community!