I'm not sure which version of Oracle we have at Work (Enterprise or Standard), but do either of them have a limit on how many user accounts you can create?
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possible duplicate of [Can you help me with my software licensing issue?](http://serverfault.com/questions/215405/can-you-help-me-with-my-software-licensing-issue) – Michael Hampton Jan 31 '13 at 18:20
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I disagree with the close voting. This is a simple yes/no question that should be eligible to have answered. There's no likelihood for "debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion". – grassroot Jan 31 '13 at 18:40
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@grassroot - this should have been closed as a dupe instead of NC. See the question that Michael linked to above. In short, this is a software licensing question (not a technical question) that needs to be directed to Oracle. – EEAA Jan 31 '13 at 18:53
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@EEAA: Yes, I see the consensus in not wanting to discuss about licensing issues here. However I find it sad, since I believe that licensing should be more and more part of every pro's skill set. – grassroot Jan 31 '13 at 19:04
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@grassroot - it absolutely should. Two points: 1) licenses vary greatly from account to account (especially in Oracle's case), so the licensing terms this user has may vary greatly from someone else's licensing terms. 2) This is not a technical question - it's a licensing question. – EEAA Jan 31 '13 at 19:36
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@grassroot - additionally there are innumerable other "things" that should be in a sysadmin's toolset, all of which are off-topic. – EEAA Jan 31 '13 at 19:37
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1@EEAA: There's nothing magical in Oracle licensing. I've gone trough one audit and I think I know some. The public policies apply, although there naturally is space for local agreements and I know they just want to sell new licenses. My point just is that it should not be prohibited to help people understand the basic principles that are open to read from SIG and other public sources. – grassroot Jan 31 '13 at 21:54
2 Answers
No version of Oracle has a (practical) limit on the number of accounts you can create (they probably have a limit at some point-- I wouldn't want to try to create more than 2^32 users for example).
Depending on how you have licensed the database, there may be limits on the number of humans and non-human processes that can access the database. Assuming that you are creating one Oracle account per human user, that would imply that creating too many would cause you to breach your licensing agreement. Oracle won't prevent you from doing this, it's up to the DBA to ensure that the system is licensed properly.
Note as well that you gain no advantage if you have a single Oracle user account with a large number of humans using that account to log in (either directly or via an application). If you are licensing by user, you still have to account for all the humans on the other end of all the applications.
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