Oracle recently introduced Standard Edition 2 (SE2) as a replacement for Standard Edition One (SE1) and Standard Edition. However does SE2 really cut the mustard or will it kill standard edition’s use case.
SE2 is a half way house between SE1 and SE and it has none of the advantages that these two popular products had. It does not have the cheapness of SE1 or the HA RAC or SE. SE2 does still come with RAC but only as a two node cluster or single CPU socket machine. Gone is the 4 node single CPU cluster which gave high availability. Also out of the window was the sweet spot SE RAC with two nodes and two CPUs per node, with its resilence in the server as well as in the RAC.
As the power of standard Intel severs increased the pay by the socket model became less apealing to Oracle but SE2 with its limit on the core count does redess the profitablity balance for Oracle but the CPU limit kills the useablity for all but the smallest business.
For really small bussinees the need to licence minium number of NU+ per proc just increases the cost and makes the aternatives look more attracive.
All in all SE2 without a SE4 will just push SME’s away.
Why would anybody want to migrate from SE to the lesser SE2 is beyondet me other than Oracle is forcing you to.
Paul the Architect 