Oracle Database XE Frequently Asked Questions

Go to the Oracle Database Express Edition (XE) Forum, and search existing questions and answers, or enter your own question.

No, you can only log Service Requests, with Oracle Support, against fully supported products, such as Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, Oracle Database Standard Edition 2, and all of the Oracle Database Cloud Services.

No, patches will not be released for XE. To obtain patches you must be on a fully supported edition, such as Oracle Database Enterprise Edition or Oracle Database Standard Edition 2. 

Yes, a Linux Docker image can be built using the Dockerfiles provided under https://github.com/oracle/docker-images

Yes, a Linux VirtualBox VM can be built using the Vagrant scripts provided under https://github.com/oracle/vagrant-boxes

You can also install into a Windows VirtualBox VM providing the version of Windows is supported. See the Oracle Database XE Windows Installation Guide.

Oracle Database XE supports up to:

• 2 CPUs for foreground processes
• 2GB of RAM (SGA and PGA combined)
• 12GB of user data on disk (irrespective of compression factor)

Oracle Database Express Edition does not restrict in which environment it can be deployed. However, Oracle Database Express Edition is not supported and does not receive any patches, including security patches. Oracle recommends to run production deployments on fully supported Oracle Database editions or Cloud Services.

The full list of features included and not included in Oracle Database XE can be seen in the Oracle Database XE Documentation. 

You can upgrade your XE environment by using one of two methods:

• Data Pump Export/Import of the old XE environment to the new one.
• Unplug the PDB from an old XE environment and plug into the new one.

For more information, please review Chapter 9, Moving from Previous Versions of Oracle Database XE to XE 21c in the installation guide.

Direct upgrades from older XE versions are not supported!

Oracle Database XE PDBs can be plugged into EE CDBs of the same version.

Plugging an XE PDBs into SE2 CDBs is currently not supported. This feature is under investigation.

For more information, please review Chapter 10, Migrating Data and Applications in the installation guide.

Plugging EE/SE2 PDBs into XE CDB is currently not supported. This feature is under investigation.

You can convert your character set by using Data Pump Export/Import to export the data, create a new database with your desired character set, and import the data again. For further information, please see the Database Utilities Documentation.

Oracle APEX is no longer included with the distribution. Instead you can to download the latest version from the Oracle APEX Home Page, and follow the instructions in the Oracle APEX Documentation to install the latest version of Oracle APEX.

SQL Developer is no longer part of Oracle Database XE. Go to the SQL Developer Home Page, or SQLcl Home Page for more information and to download the latest versions.

No, go to the ORDS Home Page to learn how you can utilize ORDS and XE for RESTful application development, and to support Oracle APEX.