Today i have been reading about the licencing of Oracle Spatial. Oracle supplies Locator as a feature of the Oracle database, it can be seen as a scaled down version of Spatial. During the years more features from Spatial have become available in Locator, making it every release worthwhile to check what has crossed the border from Spatial to Locator. A great way to promote spatial use in the database.

With the introduction of 11g the licencing (as usual) is complex and interpreting different documentations of the oracle database can lead to different conclusions in the end. So it’s good to check with your oracle supplier if what you are using is within your licence. A small example that i found on the Simon Greener blog, regarding the Oraclce 11g DB first release.

this being illegal for Locator 11g:

select mdsys.SDO_Geom.SDO_Centroid(geom,0.5) as geom,
       mdsys.SDO_Geom.SDO_Area(geom,0.5) as area,
       mdsys.SDO_Geom.SDO_Length(geom,0.5) as length,
       mdsys.SDO_Geom.SDO_ConvexHull(geom,0.5) as chull
  from projpoly2d
 where rownum = 1
/

but this is legal

select mdsys.st_polygon(geom).ST_Centroid() as geom,
       mdsys.st_polygon(geom).ST_Area() as area,
       mdsys.st_polygon(geom).ST_ExteriorRing().ST_Length() as length,
       mdsys.st_polygon(geom).ST_ConvexHull() as chull
  from projpoly2d
 where rownum = 1;

Oracle has supplied with the 11g R2 release deinstallation script to prevent the use of unlicensed features. A good feature but i can imagine that a DBA can forget to run this script leaving the Developer the responsibility of using the allowed functions.

The scripts:

• mddins.sql manually deinstalls Spatial and leaves only Locator
• mdinst.sql manually installs Spatial, so that you are able to use all features available with Spatial and Locator

Refences:

• B.1 Installing Locator or Spatial Manually
• Oracle® Spatial Developer’s Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1)
• Oracle® Spatial Developer’s Guide 11g Release 2 (11.2)
• Simon Greener blog

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