The short answer: Oracle Database Enterprise Edition installs options and management packs that are licensed separately, and some are switched on by default. Use Oracle’s chopt utility (from 11g Release 2) to disable options you have not bought. Set the CONTROL_MANAGEMENT_PACK_ACCESS parameter to NONE, or to DIAGNOSTIC, if you have not licensed the Diagnostics and Tuning Packs: its default, DIAGNOSTIC+TUNING, enables both. Each option and pack has its own price; see what Oracle licensing costs.
Oracle Database licensing challenges depend largely on the installation or use of the various Enterprise Edition options and management packs.
Provided below is a brief understanding of installing Oracle database, its implications on licensing and a few tasks to manage post-installation.
Oracle Database installation methods
There are generally two modes of installation of Oracle database:
- Interactive Installation Types
- Automated Installation Methods Using Response Files
In Interactive Installation, the Oracle Universal Installer allows you to specify the information needed to install and configure a database. In the Database Enterprise Edition, in case the ‘Select Options’ route is not used, the installer chooses automatically the most commonly used options.
In the Automated Installation Methods Using Response Files, you can automate the installation by creating & pointing to a response file. This is useful when you need to make multiple installations.
From a licensing perspective note that in either of the two methods the installer will install licensable database options and management tools. There is also a component list that can be used to enable or disable certain options.
Post-installation tasks
Oracle has provided for multiple post-installation tasks to be carried out after the initial installation of the database. Most of these tasks have to do with downloading & applying patches, creating backups, creating additional operating system accounts, setting environment variables, or upgrading the database.
Apart from the above, from a licensing perspective, the most important post-installation tasks are to do with enabling and disabling options & management packs.
Disabling options
Use Oracle’s ‘chopt’ tool
The chopt tool is a command-line utility that helps enable or disable certain options.
Using the chopt tool you can disable the following options:
- Oracle Partitioning
- Oracle Database Vault
- Oracle Real Application Testing
- Oracle Label Security
- Oracle Data Mining
- OLAP
Given below is an example of how to disable using the chopt utility:
oracle> chopt disable dv
oracle> chopt disable olap
Important Note regarding the chopt utility: This utility is available only from Oracle 11gR2 onwards.
Disabling management packs
1. From 11g onwards, Oracle provides the control_management_pack_access parameter to enable or disable the management packs. It can be set to:
- NONE: neither pack is licensed or used.
- DIAGNOSTIC: only the Diagnostics Pack is available.
- DIAGNOSTIC+TUNING: both packs are available.
Note: DIAGNOSTIC+TUNING is the default value. If you have not set the parameter, the packs are available, and their use needs licences.
2. The Diagnostic Pack gets enabled in case you are running AWR (apart from many other command line interfaces). Luckily, Oracle has given a script to remove all of AWR.
You can use this script (dbms_awr.plb) available in the Oracle support portal to disable AWR completely.
3. For not accidentally using the Tuning pack, remove all the underlying data structures that might be needed for running the tuning pack. Removing AWR will help as the tuning uses the statistics in this report to run.
Check that nothing licensable is still in use
After disabling, read DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS on each database to confirm that no unlicensed option or pack is still recording use, and keep a note of why any past use was a one-off. Across a whole estate, our Oracle License Tool does this check for every database. Our article on Oracle Database license control covers the habits that keep it that way.
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