Bill,

As a devout MS guy I was taken aback at how affordable Oracle can be under the Embedded Software License (ESL). It you want to it can be pennies on the dollar vs a "regular" license. I have an amazing rep who I could point you to. The real trick at Oracle is to recognize that the HAVE no Windows cash cow so they actually have to make money on the software. With that in mind you can get great discounts for you licenses if you use the ESL....

jp


>>>>For 5 users it is $1,490 (this is the server price, Oracle does not use CALs). This is for the standard edition one. If your app is less than 4GB in database size and will only need 1GB of RAM (which is possible because Oracle is less memory intensive than SQL Server) then you can try the Oracle Express edition which is free.
>>
>>is Oracle Express limited to stand-alone (single-user)?
>>
>>the license said:
>>
>>Any use of the Oracle Database Express Edition is subject to the following limitations;
>>1. Express Edition is limited to a single instance on any server;
>>2. Express Edition may be installed on a multiple CPU server, but may only be executed on one processor in any server;
>>3. Express Edition may only be used to support up to 4GB of user data (not including Express Edition system data);
>>4. Express Edition may use up to 1 GB RAM of available memory.
>
>You can put it on any amount of servers you want to. It will only take advantage of one processor on a server. Check out this link:
>
>http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2449&trv=1
>
>Regards,