As others, notably Tim Hall and Eddie Awad, have noted the Oracle Ace program has undergone a bit of a revamp just recently. I wholeheartedly welcome this revamp - I hesitate to say change since it seems in fact to be a consolidation of two existing programmes. It seems to me that companies that actively and deliberately engage with the technical community that uses their products gain immeasurably from the interaction, there are a number of reasons for this, but chief among them are. 

• They will gain more sales. Techies don't really like salesmen and marketing campaigns. They can however be hugely persuaded by the influence of other techies. Techies rarely making purchasing decisions directly, but they often influence them hugely.
• They will make better products. The sort of individual recognised by this sort of interaction is unafraid of giving direct feedback. Moreover because they are outside the corporate firewall but inside the sphere of influence they can give voice to concerns that it would be more difficult for employees to consider raising. 
• They will improve their reputation. Companies that engage with and reflect the concerns of their customers have better customer satisfaction and reputation ratings. 

Now the ACE program has a way to go before it reaches the level of, for example,the Microsoft MVP program, but it's clearly moving in the right direction, and in it's nomination process has a distinct advantage in that it is open to anyone to nominate potential members - thus avoiding the potential accusation that the company is picking it's own independent experts.

So I was wrong about learning 'hands-on' using otn downloads. The Software download page on OTN has been updated with some clear and straightforward language that now expressly permits the use of full oracle software for self study purposes. I'm really pleased that this is now expressly stated rather than generally understood (as for example by me here). Thanks to Justin Kestelyn for making this change.

I'll undoubtedly be proven wrong, but I don't believe there is another major software vendor that is as generous in it's support of self-study and prototyping.

Many people know that the Oracle Technology web site holds copies of all Oracle technology software - the database server, the app server and so on. Moreover it allows you a free membership and a development license of the software. There are however two common misconceptions about this software - the second of which you may have found me suggesting in the past. These are

• development systems don't need licenses and
• you can download the software and learn for free.

The only problem with these is that they are in fact not true. Lets read the relevant terms, which are quite clear for legalese.

Ownership and Restrictions We retain all ownership and intellectual property rights in the programs. The programs may be installed on one computer only, and used by one person in the operating environment identified by us. You may make one copy of the programs for backup purposes.

 

You may not: - use the programs for your own internal data processing or for any commercial or production purposes, or use the programs for any purpose except the development of a single prototype of your application;
- use the application you develop with the programs for any internal data processing or commercial or production purposes without securing an appropriate license from us;
- continue to develop your application after you have used it for any internal data processing, commercial or production purpose without securing an appropriate license from us, or an Oracle reseller;
- remove or modify any program markings or any notice of our proprietary rights;
- make the programs available in any manner to any third party;
- use the programs to provide third party training;
- assign this agreement or give or transfer the programs or an interest in them to another individual or entity; - cause or permit reverse engineering (unless required by law for interoperability), disassembly or decompilation of the programs;
- disclose results of any program benchmark tests without our prior consent; or, - use any Oracle name, trademark or logo.

emphasis mine. So allowing more than one user to access the development system would be a breach - for most of the systems commonly described as development systems this would catch them, equally most development systems I have come across are not a single prototype of an applcation. They are developments to a system that exists already - foten one that the developers did not develop.

Equally it is how to see using the otn software for learning purposes meets the 'solely for developing a single protype' standard either. So when on the internet you find advice like this you might want to take care in seeing how this applies to you.

I've just started experimenting with the Applications Management Pack for Oracle Applications (metalink registration required). Unfortunately once all was installed and configured the test instance consistently showed as down.  This was because the apps listener was showing (incorrectly) as down. I accordingly logged an SR as follows.

I am testing the Applications Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite. Post installation the status of the Apps
listener shows consistently as DOWN. Because of the way that availability and systems and subsystems are defined in this product the effect is to show concurrent processing, the e-business infrastructure and so on as all down. This is incorrect.

One of the daily checks that I do now that we have a reasonably stable Grid Control infrastructure in place is to ensure that there aren't any unexpected services down. EM is great for this. It isn't however without it's quirks. Today, for example, I noticed that one of the hosts for our cluster database had unknown availability.