Additional restrictions are also described in Lockdown and Restrictions in Using Oracle Database Exadata Express Cloud Service.

• Oracle Database Net Services (SQL*Net) Connection Timeout

  Client connections to your Exadata Express cloud database automatically disconnects after 30 minutes of idle time. This timeout interval cannot be changed. To keep your client connections alive, make sure they execute an operation on the database at least once during each 30-minute period.

• File System Access

  Access to the host file system is disabled.

• Database Sharding

  Database sharding is not supported.

• Java

  Java functionality in Oracle Database is disabled, with the exception of the prepackaged Java-based implementations required for features such as XML DB.

• Oracle Database Features on Microsoft Windows

  Oracle Database features specific to Microsoft Windows are not supported when running on Exadata Express (for example, Oracle Database Extensions for .NET). You can connect to Exadata Express from a Windows system without any problem, but database features specific to the Windows operating system cannot be used.

• Data Pump

  Data Pump Import and Data Pump Export are currently not available.

• Legacy Database Export/Import

  Legacy database export/import is not supported. The host file system cannot be accessed from Exadata Express.

• SQL*Loader

  The conventional path load method is functional, however REF columns cannot be loaded. The direct path load method is not supported.

• PDB Features

  Pluggable database (PDB) features such as unplug/plug and hot clone are not supported in this initial release.

• Enterprise Manager

  You cannot use Enterprise Manager to manage a PDB running in Exadata Express.

• LogMiner

  LogMiner is not available.

• Logical Standby (Data Guard)

  PDBs cannot be set up for logical standby.

• DBMS_ROLLING

  The DBMS_ROLLING PL/SQL package is not available.

• DBMS_LOGSTDBY

  The DBMS_LOGSTDBY PL/SQL package is not available.

• Extended Data Types and Column-Level Collation

  Setting the initialization parameter MAX_STRING_SIZE to the value EXTENDED is not supported. As a result, the following functionality is not available:

  • Extended data types: the new size limit of 32767 bytes for VARCHAR2, NVARCHAR2, and RAW columns

  • Data-bound collation: collation declarations for table columns, cluster columns, tables, views, and materialized views

  • JSON data population: cannot populate JSON data into In-Memory Column Store using the memory optimized format.

• Oracle Forms

  Using Exadata Express as the back-end database for Oracle Forms is not supported.

• Oracle Multimedia

  Oracle Multimedia is not supported.

• Oracle Text

  • The FILE_DATASTORE and URL_DATASTORE datastore types are not supported.

  • Due to permissions restrictions, the CTX_AUTO_OPTIMIZE_STATUS view and certain other views that start with CTX_ cannot be viewed by CTXSYS users.

  • The CTX_OUTPUT.START_LOG and CTX_OUTPUT.START_QUERY_LOG procedures are not available.

• Spatial and Graph

  The Spatial and Graph option is not supported in this initial release.

• Advanced Analytics

  The Data Mining SQL functions, part of Oracle Advanced Analytics option, are supported. The R interface and the Oracle Data Miner GUI, also part of Oracle Advanced Analytics option, are not supported.

• Parallel Query

  The parallel query option is disabled.

• Exadata Smart Scan and Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression (HCC)

  Exadata Smart Scan is not supported in this initial release. Exadata HCC is supported.

• Data at Rest Encryption

  Data at rest in Exadata Express is transparently encrypted by Oracle Advanced Security Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), however, you do not have the ability to directly rotate the master key for your PDB or open or close your PDB keystore. These important operations are performed by Oracle on a periodic basis. Also, Key Vault cannot be connected to Exadata Express.

• Database Vault

  Database Vault cannot be enabled in the PDB.

• Real Application Security (RAS)

  RAS is not supported in Exadata Express. Also, Oracle Virtual Private Database (VPD) and Data Redaction cannot create policies on container database (CDB) common objects.

• Flashback

  FLASHBACK DATABASE is not available; FLASHBACK TABLE generally works.

  Flashback Data Archive (Total Recall) is not supported.

• PL/SQL Debugger

  Use of the DBMS_DEBUG_JDWP package is not supported. This means that the functionality for the GUI debugging of database PL/SQL code, exposed by SQL Developer and other tools, is unavailable.

• Database Tracing

  You cannot set events to trace, generate trace files, or use view-based tracing.

• Native XA versus PL/SQL XA

  Native XA is not supported in Exadata Express, which has implications for the JDBC Thin driver. Because the JDBC Thin driver uses the Native XA protocol by default, you need to disable Native XA using setNativeXA(false) on your connection object. The JDBC OCI (Thick) driver is not impacted, because it does not use Native XA by default.

• Oracle Database In-Memory

  The In-Memory Column Store is supported just on the X50IM and X1000IM shapes, and the size of the In-Memory column is limited to 5 GB and 10 GB respectively. For In-Memory expressions, only two values are supported for the INMEMORY_EXPRESSIONS_USAGE initialization parameter: STATIC_ONLY and DISABLE.

• In-Memory Join Groups

  In-memory join groups are limited to a maximum of 5 columns per group.