[via BetaNews]

The free open source database leader MySQL has some new competition from expensive enterprise database leader Oracle. The company on Monday unveiled a beta release of 10g Express Edition, otherwise known as Oracle Database XE, which is free to develop, deploy and distribute.

Oracle’s new edition is aimed at students, small organizations and software developers looking to integrate a database into their applications. Although it offers the same core as Oracle’s more pricey business offerings, XE is limited to systems with a single processor, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of database storage space.

[…] Oracle Database XE is slated for a final release before the end of the year. Downloads are available for both Linux and Windows.