Oracle Released Oracle Database 18c What s new?

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1 Oracle Released Oracle Database 18c What s new? Author: Andra Tarata Oracle Database 18c, initially introduced as a big thing comes with new features that are supposed to make it the world s first autonomous database. In this white paper we will cover what those new features are and what is desupported with the new version of the database.

2 Contents Introduction... 3 Oracle Database 18c in practice and what's new?... 4 Desupported Features in Oracle Database 18c... 5 Schedule of Current Oracle Database 18c Releases... 6 Version Nomenclature Change... 7 Conclusion... 10

3 Introduction Introduced by Larry Ellison, Oracle s executive chairman and CTO, as a big thing, the news of releasing the Oracle Database 18c came at the end of 2017 with an official announcement. Oracle Database 18c, also called the Oracle Autonomous Database, automates security, provisioning and error handling. Oracle calls it self-driving because end users can define their desired service levels, and the database makes it happen - it handles failover and protects the data from any kind of failure. As such, most DBAs will be happy to give up patching, upgrading and routine maintenance activities. Ellison first announced the release of Oracle Database 18c in October 2017, as proof (among others) of Oracle s commitment to the cloud. Oracle s Cloud Software Portfolio grew considerably in the past 5 years through acquisitions. The latest acquisition was finalized on March 5, 2018, when Oracle completed the acquisition of Zenedge, a cloud security startup company. Other recent cloud acquisitions done in the past 5 years are among others - Aconex, NetSuite, Opower, Textura, Moat, TOA Technologies and Maxymiser. More and more organizations are considering adopting Oracle Database in the cloud as their database platform but are unsure what to choose between the different options they have. This since there are multiple different Oracle cloud services with different pricing models and service levels: Universal Credit Services includes Oracle Infrastructure as a Service (Oracle IaaS) and Oracle Platform as a Service (Oracle PaaS) cloud services and offers unlimited access to all the services in these categories. Bring Your Own License (BYOL) allows end users to use any pre-existing licenses when buying new subscriptions. For example, if you have purchased a perpetual license for Oracle Database Standard Edition earlier, then you can use the same when you buy Database Standard Package with BYOL pricing. This enables you to get a discounted price for the cloud services. Traditional Metered Service Offerings: end users are billed in arrears based on actual usage. The metered offerings apply to Oracle IaaS and Oracle PaaS cloud services. Traditional Non-metered Service Offerings: end users pay for a specific number of users over the course of the service period. Payment is upfront based on committed quantity. The non-metered offerings apply to Oracle IaaS, Oracle PaaS, and Oracle Software as a Service (Oracle SaaS) cloud services (as well as a handful of other offerings). These offerings are sold via a usage-based metric, such as Hosted Named User or Hosted Environment. As with any decision in the world of software licensing, the same applies to the cloud: you should assess and understand first if moving to the cloud really makes sense for your organization.

4 Oracle Database 18c in practice and what's new? Oracle Database 18c is a single product, specialized by workload. End users can for example subscribe to Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud for BI and Analytics, including big data workloads, or to Oracle Autonomous Enterprise OLTP Cloud, which handles mixed workloads. Developers can subscribe to a departmental Autonomous Database Cloud. This new Oracle Database 18c is optimized for each type of processing. Oracle Database 18c is the same database software that is running on premises as in the Oracle Cloud. It enables end users to take their in-house developed Oracle applications and third-party applications and run them on Oracle Cloud without incurring any application changes. End users can continue to utilize all their existing IT skills and resources and get the same support for their Oracle Databases both on premises and in the cloud. The new features included in the 18c version are related to the following areas: Cost-based Optimization. Automatic SQL query optimization, automatic statistics gathering, automatic query rewrite automatic SQL Plan management and automatic SQL tuning. Performance Tuning and Diagnostics. Automatic memory and resource management, automatic index and materialized view advisors, Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor, Automatic Database Workload capture & replay and Automatic Workload Repository. Data Optimization. Automatic undo management, automatic segment space management, Automatic Storage Management, Automatic Data Optimization and automatic columnar cache. Cloud-Scale Operations. Automatic standby management (broker), Diagnostic Framework, Multitenant Architecture, Automatic database clone refresh and machine learning in Cluster Health Advisor. The complete list of features can be accessed here. For end users that wish to upgrade to the 18c version, Oracle made this Upgrade Guide available. The only risk that you need to be aware of is that if you retain the old Oracle software, then never start the upgraded database with the old Oracle software. Only start the database with the executables in the new Oracle Database installation. Oracle Database 18c is expected to be available for on premises platforms (non-engineered Systems) with the July 2018 Release Update, so end users that want to install it on premises still need to wait a bit. At this stage, it is not clear yet if there are major differences between the cloud version and the on premises one.

5 Desupported Features in Oracle Database 18c The following features have been desupported in the 18c version: Oracle Administration Assistant for Windows this was a tool for creating database administrators, operators, users, and roles in Windows. Oracle Administration Assistant also enabled database services, startup and shutdown configurations, and Windows Registry parameter management. There is no replacement. Oracle Multimedia DICOM this was a medical imaging technology that supports the connectivity of radiological devices. There is no replacement for Oracle Multimedia DICOM. Oracle recommends that you replace Oracle Multimedia DICOM by using Oracle SecureFiles with third-party products for DICOM functionality. Oracle Multimedia Java Client Classes - To develop Java applications that manage multimedia content within Oracle Databases, Oracle recommends that you embed PL/SQL blocks in Java. Oracle XML DB - Starting with Oracle Database 18c, schema subprograms in DBMS_XMLSCHEMA, many DBMS_XDB subprograms, and many other Oracle XML DB schema features are desupported. ODP.NET, Managed Driver - Distributed Transaction DLL - Oracle is desupporting the Oracle.ManagedDataAccessDTC.dll file in Oracle Database 18c. Data Guard Broker DGMGRL ALTER Syntax - Starting with Oracle Database 18c, the Oracle Data Guard Broker ALTER command in DGMGRL is desupported. The ALTER command syntax in the Data Guard Broker DGMGRL command-line interface was deprecated in Oracle Database 10g Release 1 and replaced with the EDIT CONFIGURATION, EDIT DATABASE, and EDIT INSTANCE syntax.

6 Schedule of Current Oracle Database 18c Releases Oracle Database 18c is expected to be available for on premises platforms (non-engineered Systems) with the July 2018 Release Update.

7 Version Nomenclature Change Together with this 18c release, Oracle also changes the version nomenclature of the database releases. Beginning in July 2017, Oracle has transitioned to a new strategy for the database software release process. These changes only affect Oracle Database and Grid Infrastructure release 12.2 or later. Looking back at all the historical database releases, it s easy to identify that Oracle released in the early days multiple versions in a short period of time. But as the product grew more mature, technology evolved and developers needs increased, the effort to develop newer releases paced down to a release once every 5 years for the last two releases, and about every 2-3 years in between releases for the older versions. Oracle recently announced that they set the objective to get new features to market every year instead of waiting several years. At the same time the plan is to reduce the number of software changes released at one time. To accomplish the goals of this strategy, the following database software changes are currently being implemented: Beginning with the next Database release (originally thought as ) planned for 2018, new feature releases of the database product are being provided annually, and patches are no longer being released. To support both security-related fixes and high-priority non-security fixes to each feature release, quarterly Release Updates are being provided each January, April, July and October. Each Update is followed by up to two separate Revisions for the six months after the Update is released. For example, Release.Update.1 and Release.Update.2, where "1" and "2" represent the Revision iterations. Oracle recommends end users to stay up to date with Updates. By doing this they minimize the chance of encountering known bugs and security vulnerabilities.

8 As such, if you re confused why Oracle skipped 6 releases of the Database, it may be simpler to regard Oracle Database 18c as Oracle Database 12c Release , as Oracle has simply changed the naming to reflect the year in which the product is released. In case there are end users that reached a stable state and want to prioritize security updates over functional fixes, they may choose to apply Revisions. When they apply Revision Release.Update.1, they lag with the Update content by 3 months. When they apply Revision Release.Update.2, they lag with the Update content by 6 months. By choosing to lag on taking new Update content by 3 or 6 months, end users can take a more conservative approach to database software maintenance, but they still risk the chance of hitting known issues fixed in the most recent Updates. Oracle allows end users the possibility to move back and forth from Updates to Revisions. However, there are some restrictions as the new patch level must be a super set of the previous. To avoid surprises with patch conflicts, end users are recommended to stick to a consistent policy of always taking the same Revision level (i.e. Release.Update.0, Release.Update.1 or Release.Update.2) for their regular (quarterly) maintenance cycles. The Update and Revision strategy replaces the legacy Patch Set Update (PSU) and the legacy Database Bundle Patch (DBBP) for database software and subsequent feature releases. As of July 2017, the legacy terms 'Patch Set', 'Patch Set Update', and 'Database Bundle Patch' are not used anymore for any future releases. However, for database versions 12.1 and 11.2 Oracle continues to release quarterly Patch Set Updates and Bundle Patches. In addition to all the above changes, beginning with 2018, a new numbering schema for the database software is also implemented. Instead of a legacy nomenclature such as , a three field format consisting of: Year.Update.Revision is used, such as This allows clear indication of: the feature release designation of the database software (the first field) the quarterly Update (the second field) the quarterly Revision (the third field) The fourth field is the Oracle Database increment version. An increment version is occasionally used in Oracle Cloud deployments, and occasionally used at the direction of Oracle Support. The fifth field is reserved for future use. For most end users, the three-field format is all they will ever need.

9 To get more detailes on Oracle 18c release read Oracle Support Document

10 Conclusion Oracle 18c represents the version, but as it happens with newer patch sets, new functionalities are added to this new version. But despite the new features that are supposed to transform it into an autonomous database, the Autonomous Database remains a cloud service. As such, you will need to run your database on Oracle Public Cloud. Just installing 18c on premises will not get you an autonomous database. End users that want to deploy Oracle Database 18c on premises, will need to wait until after the summer of The growth in Oracle s Cloud sales, which exceeds the on premises sales for the first time, is the main driver of these new strategies. However, blindly following a cloud hype without doing a proper assessment, is never a good idea. First, check whether your organization really needs cloud software. What cloud providers are available, what licensing and pricing models are available and what are the possible current and future risks you may be confronted with? What is the real added value of the cloud solution and how does it save you costs on the shorter and/or longer term? Moving to the cloud seems financially attractive now but can become a lot more expensive in the end. Even though cloud solutions may deliver huge benefits to organizations, it is more important than ever to manage your software licenses and the software spending to be divided between on premises and the cloud.

11 About the author Andra Tarata "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among stars!"- Les Brown Andra has been working in the Software Licensing industry for the last 8 years, analyzing and understanding licensing business practices & product development from multiple software vendors and helping clients to better manage their software entitlements. Andra leverages her experiences of working within Oracle s License Management Services team to educate, equip and enable end-users to understand their enterprise software license entitlements. Andra holds a bachelor degree in Project Management from the National School of Political and Administrative Studies of Bucharest. Contact Andra: andra.tarata@b-lay.com We share our knowledge, so you can focus on the facts! Do you want to know more about different related license management topics, we have a selection of white papers available through If you are in need of extra expertise and a structured approach, feel free to contact B-lay. We will help you make software compliance an exciting opportunity to improve your business! About B-lay B-lay is a specialist in software license management and provides services around software compliance, software audits, software asset management tools and insight in software spend. Our services offer organizations worldwide insight into the risks associated with software licenses, help prevent license compliance issues and help create considerable cost savings by optimizing their licensing position. B-lay was founded in 2008 and has offices in the Netherlands, Romania and the US. B-lay BV Maliebaan CG Utrecht The Netherlands info@b-lay.com B-lay BV. All rights reserved.