<div>
Bye! &nbsp;Enjoy retirement.
</div>


Martin Nguyen

Service Manager

Developer & Coffee Roaster

Scott Fell

programmer-analyst

Helena Marková

Database Administrator, retired

Mark Geerlings

<div>
Time to enjoy your life’s savings, use them wisely, Wish you a happy time ahead as you are starting a new chapter in your life. <br />
EE will miss you for sure. <br />
:))
</div>


Test your restores, not your backups...

Bill Prew

<div>
I'll also miss seeing your posts here. &nbsp;<br>As slightwv suggested there is always XE or the free cloud tier- you'll always be welcome back!<br><br>If this is truly goodbye though, I wish you well in your retirement and hope you get to enjoy travels soon.
</div>


<div>
Congratulations, sounds like a great plan you have, enjoy!<br />

<hr />
»<b><i>bp</i></b>
</div>


<div>
Wishing you all the best Mark - enjoy your retirement!<br />
<br />
I’ll be drinking a nice Belgian triple beer on you :)<br />
<br />
Gerwin Jansen
</div>


<div>
Congratulations on your retirement! &nbsp;<br />
<br />
Although you will be missed, I do hope boredom does not bring you back to databases or technical stuff. &nbsp;Stay outside and enjoy life!
</div>


<div>
It's awfully kind of you to take the time to sat goodbye to EE. I wish you well in your retirement.
</div>


<div>
Mark,<br />
<br />
While our paths have not crossed as my exposure to Oracle is limited, perhaps you would consider sharing your new insight down the road on gardening with the rest of the tech.<br />
Adding gardening tips here might be something that will add some greenery and ......<br />
<br />
Best of luck
</div>


<div>
Congratulations. &nbsp;You will be missed. &nbsp;Especially your Forms experience.<br />
<br />
And you always have access to Oracle. &nbsp;Very simple to build a virtual machine and install it on there, or XE.
</div>


<div>
I tried to retire about 14 months ago - answered my phone one day - been crazy busy for yet another enterprise project ever since<br><br>So: Be careful which calls to answer &amp; enjoy your retirement Mark<br><br>Not sure how much gardening you can do in your winter (I think mine is way milder than yours) so, just in case:<br>simple access to Oracle when answering questions...<br><a href="https://dbfiddle.uk/" rel="ugc">https://dbfiddle.uk/</a>&nbsp;<br><a href="https://rextester.com/l/oracle_online_compiler" rel="ugc">https://rextester.com/l/oracle_online_compiler</a>&nbsp;<br><a href="http://sqlfiddle.com/" rel="ugc">http://sqlfiddle.com/</a>&nbsp;<br><br><br>
</div>


<div>
Thanks Mark for the lessons learned. &nbsp;Enjoy your retirement, <br />
I have done the same, but for the moment I intend to drop by here at Experts Experts now and then, <br />
I have the same problem with availability of an Oracle Database, I have XE but starting it takes a lot of time and I made a cloud instance, but I don't find it easy to use.<br />
So even your last question maybe helps, &nbsp;I will try the suggestions of PortletPaul.
</div>


<div>
Enjoy your well deserved retirement!<br>We'll be missing your posts &amp; knowledge ;-)<br><br>Cheers, Alex
</div>


<div>
For those looking for personal Oracle playgrounds, there are a few options that are pretty easy to build.<br />
<br />
You can download and install Virtualbox from <a href="https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads" rel="ugc">here</a>. &nbsp;Simple to install.<br />
<br />
Then you can go one of two routes.<br />
<br />
Prebuilt virtual machines. &nbsp;Just plug them in, from <a href="https://www.oracle.com/downloads/developer-vm/community-downloads.html" rel="ugc">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Or install your own from <a href="https://www.oracle.com/downloads/" rel="ugc">here</a>. &nbsp;Need a free login, no support contract required. &nbsp;You'll need to download Oracle Linux and whatever database version you want. &nbsp;Covered by the standard single user license.<br />
<br />
This way they only use resources when you want them to. &nbsp;I find that startup time takes a couple minutes, but I believe it has to do with the drive I have it on, it is a slow drive. &nbsp;Also, if you build your own, startup time is affected by a check for updates, you really should turn that off.
</div>


<div>
<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
OK, this &quot;question&quot; is probably abusing the purpose of this site, but I plan to do this only once, and I can delete this in a few days.<br />
<br />
After being active on this site for over 20 years, I don't plan to continue being active here from now on. &nbsp;I retired from my DBA job last week and no longer have access to an Oracle database. &nbsp;I also don't plan to spend much time on technical topics or sites like this in the future. &nbsp;I've enjoyed the interaction here over the years, both in helping some people and in learning from many of you. &nbsp;Now I plan to spend time in my garden, and hope to spend time with grandchildren, some volunteer work and some travel (after the corona virus restrictions are lifted).<br />
<br />
My decision to retire now was made long ago, long before the corona virus pandemic caused many people to switch to working from home (or not be able to work at all!) lately.
</div>
</div>


OK, this "question" is probably abusing the purpose of this site, but I plan to do this only once, and I can delete this in a few days.

After being active on this site for over 20 years, I don't plan to continue being active here from now on.  I retired from my DBA job last week and no longer have access to an Oracle database.  I also don't plan to spend much time on technical topics or sites like this in the future.  I've enjoyed the interaction here over the years, both in helping some people and in learning from many of you.  Now I plan to spend time in my garden, and hope to spend time with grandchildren, some volunteer work and some travel (after the corona virus restrictions are lifted).

My decision to retire now was made long ago, long before the corona virus pandemic caused many people to switch to working from home (or not be able to work at all!) lately.

How to say goodbye

Oracle is an object-relational database management system. It supports a large number of languages and application development frameworks. Its primary languages are SQL, PL/SQL and Java, but it also includes support for C and C++. Oracle also has its own enterprise modules and application server software.