This tutorial article is meant to provide a visual guide to the process of installing Oracle express edition (XE) onto a Windows XP Professional computer. The video below contains the actual tutorial, while this document provides additional information and clickable links to the required software.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VojTYmTNaj4[/youtube]

High-Level Steps

1. Ensure you are logged into Windows as a user with Administrator rights
2. Add 127.0.0.1 to internet explorer intranet zone (0:40)
3. Run windows installer (1:32)
4. Navigate to xe administration web page to validate (5:10)
5. Optionally enable HTTP access from remote machines (5:53)

The times in parenthesis are the approximate start times for that step in the video.

Note: The password we are using in this tutorial is “Consult1ng” (without the quotes), which we use in subsequent videos and tutorials.

Notes and Helpful Resources

You need to have a computer running either Windows XP Professional or Server 2003. Oracle XE will run on XP Home with some modifications and minor loss of features. XE can also be installed to many *nix platforms.

Hardware requirements: For the Windows installation, you need at least 512 MB or RAM, and 1.6 GB of free hard disk.

Software Download and Links

Following is the link to the download page for the XE software: Oracle XE Download

On this page you will see 3 downloads. You do need to be a member of the OTN (Oracle Technology Network), but that is free.

• OracleXE.exe: This is the server file for Western Languages
• **OracleXEUniv.exe: This is the Unicode server edition
• OracleXEClient: This is the client software package.

**This tutorial uses the OracleXEUniv.exe version. The Oracle client will only need to be installed on any remote machine that needs to connect to your XE database (not needed on the machine where you are actually installing the database).

Additional Oracle XE Documentation can be downloaded, including the ‘Installation Guide for Microsoft Windows‘ which is what this tutorial video is based off of.

Oracle XE Download article

Useful Hints

Before starting the installation, take a moment and determine a few of the following, it will help you later on.

• Password desired for SYS and SYSTEM.
• Any potential users, and what level of authority they may need.
• Installation space available on the computer.
• Potential add-ons (APEX, etc) to the base install.
• Is access going to be needed by other computers.
• Is secure communication from other computers required.

Note: Setting up XE with secure communication (HTTPS) is beyond the scope of this tutorial. We plan to create another guide for that soon, though, so check back or subscribe to our blog feeds.