Easily Tuning Oracle XE 10g in Linux? (Seems to be crashing)

Question

+(This was previously posted on the General forum, but I was told that this might be a better one to post this question.)+
I teach a very basic database concepts class at a community college. Rather than using Access to teach SQL, I am trying to use Oracle XE 10g because it is much more ANSI-compliant. I have Oracle XE setup on a Linux box (CentOS 5.3), and we are logging in through the APEX Web interface.
I have a few questions:
1.) Originally, I had it setup on a box with only 256 MB of RAM. It worked, but when I had all 18 of my students working with it concurrently, it repeatedly asked them for their username and password. It would work for a while, then ask again. Is this a sign of low RAM or of something else? I have upgraded it to 1 GB now, so I will see how it goes tomorrow.
2.) Even with the 1 GB increase, I have noticed that I am down to 300 MB of free RAM when I login myself. Will 18 students really put a strain on the system? I need this to be available almost 24/7 because my students will be using it to create basic tables and creating SQL queries to act on those tables.
3.) Having said all that, is there a quick and dirty way to simply tune the database to run better? Anything I can turn off, for example, because I am using the bare basics (18 users, using the APEX interface, creating and manipulating tables with no more than 100 rows per table, running basic queries on tables, etc.)?
Thanks for any guidance.
Jason

Answer 1

JasonFree wrote:
I am not familiar with SQL Developer.Desc: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/sql_developer/index.html
Demo: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/sql_developer/files/obe.html (incl tutorials)
Dnld: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/sql/index.html
>
Would I still use XE but just the database itself? Yes.
Would I turn off APEX (even though I don't know how)?Not necessary.
>
Could SQL Developer be used by the student at home? Yes.
And is it extremely easy to install and use? Download, unzip & run
Those are the primary reasons I am using APEX because, despite its weirdness, it is pretty easy to use for our purposes and they can access it from their home computers and work on basic development at any time.APEX is a great app development and app runtime platform (think MS Access done right :-) ) but is questionable as a basic SQL learning tool.