Oracle Performance Tuning Basics — Course Requirements

This lesson identifies what you need to take the Performance Tuning Basics course. Because Oracle 23ai is available through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as a fully managed Autonomous Database at no cost, a local Oracle installation is no longer a hard requirement. Students who prefer a local environment can install Oracle Database Free, the developer release of Oracle 23ai, on their own hardware. Both options are described below.

Option 1 — Oracle Cloud Free Tier (Recommended)

The simplest way to access Oracle 23ai for this course is through the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Free Tier. The Free Tier provides two distinct benefits: a 30-day trial period with US $300 in cloud credits usable across OCI services, and a set of Always Free resources that do not expire after the trial ends. The Always Free tier includes up to two Autonomous Database instances running Oracle Database 23ai, each with 20 GB of storage and a fixed compute allocation. This is sufficient to run all scripts and exercises in this course.

Signing Up for Oracle Cloud Free Tier

To create a Free Tier account, navigate to the Oracle Cloud Free Tier page at oracle.com/cloud/free and click the Start for Free button. The signup process requires a valid email address, a credit or debit card for identity verification (no charges are applied for Free Tier usage), and a selection of your home region. The home region is permanent and cannot be changed after account creation. Regions that support Always Free Autonomous Database with Oracle 23ai features include Phoenix, Ashburn, and London among others — confirm availability during signup. Account activation typically completes within a few minutes.

Creating an Oracle 23ai Autonomous Database

After logging into the OCI Console at cloud.oracle.com, verify that your home region is selected in the top-right region selector, then navigate to Oracle Database and select Autonomous Database. Click Create Autonomous Database, enable the Always Free toggle, and select Oracle Database 23ai as the version. Choose a workload type — Transaction Processing is appropriate for the exercises in this course. Set a database name and administrator password, then click Create. Provisioning completes in a few minutes. You can connect to the database using Database Actions, the web-based SQL worksheet built into OCI, or SQL Developer with a wallet download for local connectivity.

Important Free Tier Constraints

Always Free Autonomous Database instances are subject to fixed resource limits. A database that remains inactive for seven or more consecutive days may be automatically stopped. Instances inactive for extended periods — typically 90 or more cumulative days — may be reclaimed. To avoid interruption during this course, connect to your instance at least once per week. The $300 in trial credits are usable for 30 days and expire regardless of whether they are consumed. After the 30-day trial period, Always Free resources continue indefinitely under their fixed limits unless you manually upgrade to Pay As You Go.

Option 2 — Oracle Database Free (Local Installation)

Students who prefer a local environment can download Oracle Database Free, the developer release of Oracle 23ai, from oracle.com. Oracle Database Free runs on Linux x86-64 and is available as an RPM package or a Docker container image. It supports up to 2 CPUs, 2 GB of RAM for the database, and 12 GB of user data. This is adequate for all exercises in this course. A Windows or macOS workstation can run Oracle Database Free inside a Linux virtual machine using VirtualBox or a comparable hypervisor.

Client Tools

Either access option supports the following client tools, any one of which is sufficient for this course:

• SQL Developer — Oracle's graphical IDE, available as a free download from oracle.com. Suitable for running scripts, viewing execution plans, and examining V$ views.
• Database Actions — the browser-based SQL worksheet available directly in the OCI Console for Autonomous Database users. No local installation required.
• SQL*Plus / SQLcl — the Oracle command-line interfaces. SQLcl is the modern replacement for SQL*Plus and supports the same commands with additional formatting options.

Background Knowledge

This course assumes familiarity with Oracle SQL and a working understanding of basic database administration concepts including tablespaces, data files, and the Oracle instance. Students who have not worked with Oracle database administration before should complete the Database Architecture course on this site before beginning this series. The five courses in the Performance Tuning series build on one another in the following order:

1. Performance Tuning Basics (this course)
2. Tuning the Oracle Instance
3. Tuning Oracle SQL
4. Tuning the External Oracle Environment
5. Advanced Oracle Tuning Concepts

In the next lesson, you will find the course project description, which provides the database scenario used throughout