I recently wrote about the announcement of Oracle Database 23c Free Developer Release built and made available with developers in mind – you can read that here: Oracle Database 23c FREE – Developer Release .

In this post I will provide step-by-step instructions to install Oracle Database 23c Free Developer Release using the VirtualBox Appliance provided by the Oracle product development team. Using this method, they have made it very easy to quickly get started!

Requirements

• At least 4GB RAM.
• At least 20GB of free space

What’s in the box?

The virtual machine contains:

• Oracle Linux 8.7
• Oracle Database 23.2 Free – Developer Release for Linux x86-64
• Oracle REST Data Services 23.1
• Oracle SQLcl 23.1
• Oracle APEX 22.2

Installation

Step 1: If you don’t already have VirtualBox installed, you can get it here. Alternatively skip to step 2.

Step 2: Navigate to here and download the pre-configured Virtual Machine

Step 3: Open VirtualBox and Click “Import”

Step 4: Using the wizard, browse for the Oracle_Database_23c_Free_Developer_Appliance.ova file that you downloaded in step 2 then click “Next”

Step 5: Click “Finish”

Step 6: You will receive a prompt to agree to the Oracle license agreement. Select “Agree” if you wish to continue

Step 7: VirtualBox will now import the appliance

Step 8: Once the appliance is imported, you will see the screen below. Double Click “Oracle DB Developer VM” to power on

Step 9: The VM is powered on and ready to use when you see the following screen

Using Oracle Database 23c – Virtual Box Appliance

After powering on your VM, you will be presented with a terminal (or browser) which has the following information:

*** Please note that this appliance is for testing purposes only, as such it is unsupported and should not be used as a production environment. ***

Database Information:
Oracle SID : free
Pluggable DB : freepdb1

ALL PASSWORDS ARE : oracle

Sample schemas have been preloaded (HR, OE, PM, IX, BI, AV, SH) for your convenience.

Oracle REST Data Service (ORDS) and APEX are both installed, configured, and available at startup.
Port Forwards are defined for HTTP and SQL*Net, these are configurable in the Virtual Machine settings.
8080:8080
1521:1521

From your host, simply launch:
http://localhost:8080/ords to launch APEX
http://localhost:8080/ords/sql-developer to start SQL Developer Web
sql hr/oracle@localhost:1521/freepdb1 tp get a SQLcl session for the Pluggable Database (PDB)
sql system/oracle@localhost:1521/free to get a SQLcl session for the Container Database (CDB)

The HR schema is REST enabled, you can login to SQL Developer Web using:
HR/oracle

It is really simple to get going with 23c

Accessing SQLcl session for Container Database (CDB)

Open the terminal and type sql system/oracle@localhost:1521/free. You will quickly connect as the system user as can be seen in the below screenshot:

Access SQLcl session for Pluggable Database (PDB)

Open the terminal and type sql hr/oracle@localhost:1521/freepdb1. You will quickly connect as the hr user as can be seen in the below screenshot.

Accessing using the sqlcl Shortcut

Step 1: You will have a shortcut available in the VM for sqlcl. Double-click it.

Step 2: When prompted, enter hr as the username and oracle as the password (pressing the enter key in between)

Step 3: The terminal will connect as the hr user and you will see the below. You can can now use the database.

Accessing using SQL Developer Web (Database Actions)

Step 1: You will have a shortcut available in the VM for browser. Double-click it.

Step 2: Navigate to http://localhost:8080/ords/sql-developer. Enter hr as username and oracle as password. Click “Sign In”

Step 3: You will be presented with the Database Actions dashboard. (See my post, Oracle Autonomous Database: Accessing & Using Database Actions to learn more about Database Actions). Click “SQL”

Step 4: SQL Developer Web will open. You can can now utilise the database.