It is very important that Oracle users do not judge their state of license compliance from Oracle White Papers. Oracle White Papers are technical documents created by Oracle folks that are not licensing people.
It is very common to find the terms: failover, standby and backup, used to describe different technical configurations of Information Technology products. Those are commonly used technology terms that imply uses that may invoke a universal understanding among technical people, but they do not necessarily represent Oracle licensing words with the same name. I have personally read Oracle White Papers that use the term “Failover” in describing an accurate configuration and depiction of the functionality of an Oracle solution. Unfortunately, when I reviewed the configuration from a licensing perspective it represented the Oracle Data Recovery Method known as “Standby”, which has a drastically different licensing requirement than the Method known as “Failover”. The White Paper was accurate in the use of the term “Failover” to describe what would happen within the servers during a disaster event. However, the Oracle White Paper used the term from a technical perspective with no reference in the document relating the use to the aspect of licensing the product.
Over the years I have heard from many clients who were citing an Oracle White Paper as evidence of their server configurations and their related licensing requirements. I appreciated the misunderstanding, but had to clarify that Oracle White Papers are technical documents and are not intended to be written to detail or explain a product’s licensing requirements. There are various Oracle Policy documents that can be used as licensing guidelines, but those are clearly about the topic of licensing and not written from a technical perspective.
Be careful that one of your well intentioned technologists has not accidentally interpreted your organization’s Oracle license compliance from terms used in an Oracle White Paper.