What exactly is the definition of an Oracle User

[bruce_giles]

Hello Oracle Experts, our licensing team is investigating some Oracle User per Licence challenges and asked me where the Oracle User comes from. From what I have read, the user represents the users of the database instances. Our licensing team has extracted the list of users per license but the application support team is questioning them.

So, my question is this  ... what does that "user' do to be identified as a user. Do they simply access the database via the related application or does it mean they actually logged onto the database instance. My knowledge of Oracle is very suspect at best, so I am hoping I can learn something here. I have read through the Reference guide and the Oracle practice guide but did not see anything specific.

Thx as Always

Bruce

[m2019sam · Accepted solution]

Hi Bruce,

the current Oracle license metric is NUP (Named User Plus). You should count every "human or non-human operated device" that have direct or indirect access (via an application, third party or custom form/report) to the database. Therefore the actual users are counted at the  multiplexing frondend.  No need to license system users in the database. Exampes:
- 4 DBA access the database via a user account admin  - license  4 users

- 100 employees access the application running on the database - license all 100

Keep in mind that you can only use this metric if you actually know and can count the number of users. In case of an application with web access you should apply Processor metric.

Maria

[bruce_giles]

Hi Maria, thanks so much for the quick reply .. I really appreciate it !!
Your explanation was exactly what I was hoping to get .. again .. really appreciate it.

Learn something new everyday day !!

Bruce