At OpenWorld, Larry Ellison announced an Autonomous Database cloud (service), which is self-driving, self-securing, and self-repairing.
Although there was a lot of excitement surrounding the announcement, there were also a lot of questions.
Is Oracle Database 18c the Autonomous Database?
How does it work exactly?
When and where will it become available?
How will it impact the role of the DBA?
So, I thought it would be a good idea to try and answer these questions and concerns.
Most of the answers can be found in a series of videos we shared in early November or in the Oracle Autonomous Database Strategy white paper. But before I introduce the videos let me address the first question, “Is Oracle Database 18c the Autonomous Database?”
The simple answer is NO. The Autonomous Database is a Cloud service running on top of Oracle Database 18c along with additional services to provide performance and availability SLAs. They are definitely not the same thing. Hopefully the formula below makes this clear.
Now that we have cleared that up, let’s move on to the videos I mentioned.
In the first video, Juan Loaiza gives you a peek behind the curtain of the Autonomous Database. He explains how it delivers full end-to-end automation for mission-critical workloads, including automation in provisioning, patching, securing, monitoring, optimizing, and more.
In the second video, Cetin Özbütün provides an overview of the first Autonomous Database service to become available later this year, the Autonomous Data Warehouse. This service is extremely easy to use as you simply load data and begin running queries. Oracle will take care of everything else for you.
In the third video, George Lumpkin shares more details on the features of the Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud and explains how customers can simply load their data and start running queries immediately.
In the fourth video, Vipin Samar outlines how the Oracle’s Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud integrates automation to help deliver a self-securing data management platform.
And finally yours truly explains which aspect of the DBA role will be done automatically (mundane custodial tasks), allowing the DBAs to spend more time innovating and helping the business to better leverage their data.
As we get closer the official launch of new services we will share more information. So stay tuned!