Oracle plans to release a free version of its database by the end of the year in a move to compete more effectively at the low end of the market.

Oracle released a beta version, called Oracle Database 10g Express Edition, last week for 32-bit Windows and Linux systems. The software can be downloaded free for development and limited production use. It also can be distributed free with third-party products from independent software vendors (ISVs), Oracle says.

The company says it hopes to attract users by offering them a free starter database for development and deployment purposes. Along with developers it wants to attract more ISVs, educators and students. Production use comes with restrictions. The database is limited to use with 4G bytes of data and 1G byte of RAM and can be used on only one processor per server, Oracle says. The same conditions apply to ISVs. Support is offered via an online user forum.

The product is built on the same code base as Oracle's existing 10g databases but with some options removed, so applications will run unchanged on Oracle's higher-end databases, according to Oracle.

The company says it hopes users will try the free version and upgrade to a paid Oracle product if their data-management needs outgrow its capacity.

Oracle leads the relational database market with its main rival, IBM. But Microsoft's SQL Server is gaining ground, analysts say, and momentum is building behind open source products from MySQL and others.

Forum: Free isn't good enough anymore - Not when unlimited versions of open-source databases are available. What do you think?