The ranks of free databases gained another recruit Tuesday with the general availability of Oracle 10g XE.

Available as a 150-Mbyte download via Oracle’s Web site, 10g XE is compatible with the bigger-iron Oracle databases, the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company has said.

Like competitive offerings from Microsoft and IBM, 10g XE has hardware and memory constraints. It’s designed for use on one-processor machines and handles up to 4 Gbytes of user data and up to 1 Gbyte of memory.

Developers are the target audience for 10g XE, according to Mark Townshend, senior director of database product management at Oracle.

Source: InformationWeek