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My company is a software vendor. We develop software that is later deployed on the customer's environment, on their own machines. Our software uses various DBMS, depending on what the customer has. We do it for PostgreSQL, MySQL and so on.

Currently we have two new customers, which are using Oracle DB in their own production environments. We are obliged, however, to provide an user acceptance environments, which are ought to be 1:1 to the customer's production environment.

Hence my question - do we need to buy an Oracle DB license for ourselves, provided we're never going to have a production environment with that product? In another words - since the customer has the Oracle DB license do we also need to buy one only for testing purposes?

Cleankod
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2 Answers2

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Yes you do. If you install the Oracle software you need to pay for it. However numerous exceptions exist including

  • you can use Oracle Express 11g for free
  • your customer may have licencing provisions that apply to you

Either way, do not take anything from my answer or anyone else's answer as valid. Oracle licencing is complex and a final word can only come from them. Contact your representative and ask for clarification.

kevinskio
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From here, it appears that you can use it for the very purposes you describe at no cost. The relevant passage is here

License Rights and Restrictions Oracle grants You a nonexclusive, nontransferable, limited license to internally use the Programs, subject to the restrictions stated in this Agreement, only for the purpose of developing, testing, prototyping, and demonstrating Your application and only as long as Your application has not been used for any data processing, business, commercial, or production purposes, and not for any other purpose.

Now, IANAL, but it appears fairly crystal clear to me that UAT is NOT "data processing, business, commercial, or production purposes". It appears to me that this licence is quite liberal in that it allows you to do lots of stuff pre-production, as LONG AS you don't use the system for the tasks outlined above.

Again, I am not a lawyer, and YMMV, but I would argue strongly that UAT is not production use of the system (you are merely getting it ready for production!). But, as suggested by the other poster, you may wish to check with your local rep (that is, if you don't live in North Korea, Iran or the Sudan! :-)

[EDIT]

Thanks to @mustaccio, I visited here where the poster seems to think the complete opposite to what I have written. As so eloquently put in that same thread, advice from the internet is probably worth what you pay for it, except on dba.stackexchange that is! :-)

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