Oracle Database 12c Release 2 Available Everywhere!

Today Oracle Database 12c Release 2 became available for download on Oracle.com for both Linux & SPARC. So anyone who wasn’t ready to try 12.2 in the Cloud can now play around with it, in the comfort of their own environment.

With each new release of the Oracle Database come fundamental architectural changes, driven by new technologies and user requirements. This has never been more evident than with Oracle Database 12c, which has 3 marquee features:

1. Multitenant
2. Database In-Memory
3. Sharding

Multitenant

Oracle Multitenant brings the first major change in the database architecture since the introduction of RAC in 9i. Instead of having a stand-alone database for every application, Multitenant provides a new database consolidation model in which multiple Pluggable Databases (PDBs) are consolidated within a Container Database (CDB). This allows the PDBs to share the memory and background processes of a common CDB, while keeping many of the isolation aspects of single databases. If you are interested in trying out Oracle Multitenant there is a great tutorial available on oracle.com that will step you through all of the different aspects of this new database architecture.

Database In-Memory

Oracle Database In-Memory introduces another major change in the database, this time in the form of a new columnar, compressed format and a new In-Memory column store. Up until now the Oracle Database has only stored data in a row format. With the introduction of Database In-Memory, data can now be populated into memory both in a row format (the buffer cache) and a new in-memory optimized columnar format (the column store), simultaneously. The Oracle Optimizer is fully aware of what data exists in the column format and automatically routes analytic queries to the column format and OLTP operations to the row format. It’s extremely easy to begin using Database In-Memory and I’ve written a set of getting started posts on the In-Memory blog that walk you through it.

Sharding

Starting with Oracle Database 12c Release 2 it is now possible to horizontally partition or shard a very large database across a pool of independent databases called shards (up to 1000 shards are supported). Each shard runs on it’s own server and storage, which removes the necessity to have shared storage or clusterware! If you have a large OLTP application that you think could benefit from sharding you can follow the steps outlined in one of the new sharding cookbooks to set up your first sharded Oracle Database!

As you can imagine there are tons and tons of other new features in Oracle Database 12c Release 2. Way to many for me to describe in just one post but I will cover a lot more of them over the coming months in more detail.

But if you can’t wait until then I’ve written an article for the March issue of UKOUG Oracle Scene magazine that covers more of my favorite new features and will be published next week!