1 Introduction

Oracle Database Free is a fully free edition of the Oracle Database.

Development Environments

Oracle Database Free supports the following development environments:

• Java: Develop and deploy modern database-bound Java Web applications (Servlets), modules (Microservices) or standalone Java frameworks using the Oracle JDBC Driver, the Universal Connection Pool (UCP), and the Database-embedded JVM (for in-place, server-side processing).

  Visit https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/appdev/jdbc.html for more information.

• C and C++ : Developers can use Oracle Call Interface (OCI) and Oracle C++ Call Interface (OCCI) to create high performance programs accessing Oracle Database Free. ODBC and the ODPI-C wrapper over OCI are also usable.

  Visit https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/appdev/oci.html for more information.

• .NET, Visual Studio, and Visual Studio Code:: Developers can use Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) for C# and VB.NET data access to any Oracle Database. At design-time, they can use Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio or Oracle Developer Tools for VS Code for full development life cycle support.

  Visit https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/appdev/dotnet.html for more information

  For walk-throughs on creating a .NET application with Oracle Database Free:

  Visit https://www.oracle.com/tools/technologies/quickstart-dotnet-for-oracle-database.html

  The walk-throughs cover several development scenarios, including with VS Code, Visual Studio, and command line.

• Oracle SQL Developer: Oracle SQL Developer is a graphical version of SQL*Plus that gives database developers a convenient way to perform basic tasks. You can connect to any target Oracle Database Free schema using standard Oracle database authentication. Once connected, you can perform operations on objects in the database.

  Download and install Oracle SQL Developer from:

  https://www.oracle.com/database/sqldeveloper/

• Oracle SQL Developer Web: Included with Oracle REST Data Services, Oracle SQL Developer Web is the web-based version of Oracle SQL Developer that enables you to run queries and scripts, create database objects, build data models, and monitor database activity.

• Oracle Developer Tools for VS Code: This free Visual Studio Code extension enables you to edit and run SQL and PL/SQL for Oracle Database and Oracle Autonomous Database.

  Download and install Oracle Developer Tools for VS Code from the Visual Studio Code Marketplace:

  https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Oracle.oracledevtools

• Oracle Application Express: Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a rapid web application development tool for the Oracle database.

  Download and install Application Express from:

  https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/appdev/rest.html

• Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS): ORDS makes it easy to develop modern REST interfaces for relational data in the Oracle Database and the Oracle Database JSON Document Store.

  Download and install ORDS from: 

  https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/appdev/rest.html

• SODA (Simple Oracle Document Access) APIs that let you develop NoSQL-style applications against collections of JSON documents. Native language SODA drivers are available for common languages.

  Visit https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/simple-oracle-document-access/ for more information.

Scripting Languages

You can use scripting languages such as:

• Python

  The python-oracledb driver is a Python programming language extension module allowing Python programs to connect to Oracle Database.

  Visit https://oracle.github.io/python-oracledb/ for more information.

• Node.js

  The node-oracledb driver allows Node.js applications to access Oracle Database.

  Visit https://oracle.github.io/node-oracledb/ for more information.

• PHP

  Access Oracle Database with the PHP OCI8 extension or the PDO_OCI Driver. PHP OCI8 and PDO_OCI are part of the PHP open source project.

  Visit https://www.php.net/oci8 for more information on PHP OCI8 and https://www.php.net/pdo_oci for more information on PDO_OCI.

• Go

  Access Oracle Database using the open source godror driver.

  Visit https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/godror/godror for more information.

• ROracle

  ROracle is an open source R package supporting a DBI-compliant Oracle driver based on the high performance OCI library.

  Visit https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/roracle-downloads.html for more information about ROracle.

• Ruby

  Build Ruby and Ruby on Rails applications using the ruby-oci8 driver or JRuby with the Oracle Enhanced Adapter for ActiveRecord.

  Visit:

  • https://www.rubydoc.info/gems/ruby-oci8/ for information about ruby-oci8.

  • https://www.jruby.org/ for information about JRuby.

  • https://github.com/rsim/oracle-enhanced for information about Oracle Enhanced Adapter.

   

• Rust

  The open source rust-oracle driver lets Rust programs access Oracle Database.

  Visit https://crates.io/crates/oracle for more information.

• Others

  Accessing Oracle Database Free from other languages is possible using community drivers.

Oracle Call Interface (OCI) Demonstration Programs

A set of OCI demonstration programs and their corresponding project files are available in the demo subdirectory of Oracle home after an Oracle Database Free installation.

You can run these OCI demonstration programs to familiarize yourself with the steps involved in developing OCI applications. Oracle Database Free does not support generating the client shared library. The build option in demo_rdbms.mk is not valid for Oracle Database Free. You can compile and link application and demo programs with the provided header files. Because the object (.o's) and archive (.a's) libraries are not available in the installed location, you cannot use genclntsh and genclntst.

Examples

You can download and install Oracle Database Examples in an existing Oracle home to view the product demonstrations.

See Examples Installation Guide for more information about products available on the Oracle Database Examples

Examples are also available from https://github.com/oracle/oracle-db-examples

Learn More About Oracle Database Free

• Oracle Database Free home page:

  https://www.oracle.com/database/free/

• Oracle Database Free Discussion Forum:

  You can search the Oracle Database Free Discussion Forum for answers to problems already discussed and post new questions to the community for answers.

  https://forums.oracle.com/ords/apexds/domain/dev-community/category/oracle-database-free