What is Oracle Embedded license?

Oracle ESL license is only available to Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and requires the company to become an Oracle Partner. Oracle provides a 90% discount on their technology price list for the highly restrictive license. Oracle’s Full Use and Application Specific Full Use (ASFU) licenses require technical support, but the ESL license does not ISVs are not allowed to list the Oracle database as a separate component when reselling an ESL license

Which license models are available?

There are two license models available for the ESL: one based on standard Oracle licensing metrics (with a 90% discount) and a royalty-based model (Oracle takes a percentage of the ISV’s price list)

How does Oracle Embedded license work?

The ESL license can only be used with a specific application package defined in the APRF agreement and cannot be accessed directly by end users

The database cannot have direct access to any third-party application and must be installed and run in silent mode with no end-user configuration

Administrative tasks such as startup, shutdown, and backup must be managed through the ISV application interface

The database cannot be accessed by third-party tools and cannot be managed with SAM tools

If an Oracle ULA is entered, the ESL licenses will not be converted

The ISV is only allowed to access the database for technical maintenance and the embedded licenses cannot be upgraded to ASFU or Full Use licenses

Oracle ESL licenses are not subject to end-customer license audits, but may be audited if Oracle decides to audit the ISV who resold the license

Oracle end customers are not responsible for ensuring compliance with ESL licenses

Oracle-embedded licensing is subject to Oracle’s rules on virtualization, but the royalty-based license model avoids this issue