"Faking" an Oracle Database

Question

The QA department that tests my apps at work uses an Oracle database that they all share. Things get really hairy w/ their cases getting changed. bug reported filed + I spend time just to find out the test case has been changed = time wasted.

What I'd like is for dev and qa to all have our own copy of Oracle running on our machines, so we can protect our data and chase our tails... less.

The problem, which I understand, is we don't have funding for all those licenses. Using an open source database won't work because we have all kinds of PL/SQL packages and triggers that I'm sure tie us to Oracle.

Does anyone know of a way (or maybe an open source product) to "fake" an Oracle database? There are no performance requirements at all. I don't mean mocking objects (we do use that for unit testing), but the actual "listening on a port for your request" RDMS. It's a longshot, but I have to ask.

Answer 1

Use Oracle Express for this purpose.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/products/express-edition/overview/index.html

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