[geeks] Q: Regarding low/no-cost Oracle licenses for training purposes

[Ken Hansen]

Subject line say it all, my company is consiering a migration to Oracle, and I have a deep personal interest in rediscovering my previous Oracle exp. I would like to set up a "good" personal Oracle machine for home training purposes.

My thought is to set up my Ultra 2 w/dual 300 MHz CPUs & 512 Meg RAM but would that be a reasonable box? I have not touched Oracle since Oracle 7.4, and it is my hope to get a system as close as possible to a "real, production-level" system. What level of Oracle is good and stable - 8.X? 9.X? Other?

On a completely different plane, would an SS/5-170 w/256 Meg be reasonable (again, no production load, just trivial testing/development work)? What about my SPARCbook 3TX (SS/5-170 CPU equivalent) w/128 Meg RAM - just a bad idea to try???

Oh, and licenses are freely available for persoanl/non-commercial use, correct?

Pointers to good books appreciated as well...

I'm sending this from my office, so I may not see your replies until tonight...

Thanks in advance,

Ken