Looks like with Oracle’s recent announcement all of the big names in the commercial database market have free versions that can be used in production environments. There is Sybase ASE Express Edition for Linux, Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, and Oracle Database 10g Express Edition.
Here’s a short feature comparison on the very basic stats.
Oracle Database 10g Express Edition
4 GB of data
1 CPU
1 GB of RAM
One instance per server
Downloads For Windows or Linux
Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
4 GB of data
1 CPU
1 GB of RAM
Windows Only
Sybase ASE Express Edition for Linux
5 GB of data
1 CPU
2 GB of RAM
Linux
Each of these databases are exceptional pieces of technology. I have worked mainly with Oracle and SQL Server and am really blown away with the features that have been packed into Oracle 10g and SQL Server 2005. I think these moves by the commercial database companies to release free versions of their software could really have an impact on the open source databases typically used to build small to medium sized databases on the cheap. We’ll see how it affects their future.
Also, the Alabama .Net Code Camp this past weekend went great. I’ll have a post tomorrow summarizing things and posting a link to the files from my presentation.