Oracle enterprise requires a higher licensing fee than oracle standard - enterprise allows gives you some features not present in standard. Enterprise and standard are available in 815, 816, and 817.
Oracle 8i includes 8.1.5, 8.1.6, and 8.1.7, with 817 being identified by oracle as the "terminal release" before they moved onto oracle 9i. Release 816 is the first version to be certified by oracle to run on windows 2000. By mistake one day I tried to load 815 onto a win2k box and it would not work. I deleted it and reloaded with 817 and all was fine.
Personal Oracle 8i was released as version 816 - there is a cd for nt/win2k and a separate cd for win98. PO8i is certified for win98, and NOT for win95 - it will sometimes load ok onto win95 but it is a fluke and do not expect it to be troulbe free. Also, the reverse is true for Personal Oracle 8 - it is certified for win 95 and not win98. It sometimes will load onto a win98 box but not always - and may give unexpected problems.
If you try to load the nt/win2k PO version on a win98 box, you only get the client loaded, not the db.
PO816 will run on win2k also. From personal experience loading and administering 815, 816 and 817 on NT I strongly recommend that you install 817 if at all possible whether you are on nt or win2k - you will hve fewer problems. The latest difference I found between 816 and 817 is that we find that 816 freezes up when veritas backup software is run on the server, but 817 does not.
Hope this clears up your confusion.
