Oracle Database 23ai: find out what’s new and what’s improved

Oracle Database is one of the world’s most widely used relational database management systems, known for its long-standing innovation and reliability. It’s adopted by companies of all sizes and industries, from small businesses to large enterprises, due to its robustness, scalability and comprehensive feature set.

Oracle Database is available in the following editions:

• Oracle Database Standard Edition: Ideal for small and medium-sized businesses, offering essential features for managing data.
• Oracle Database Enterprise Edition: The most comprehensive edition with advanced features like high availability, clustering, data warehousing and more, making it the preferred choice for large enterprises with complex requirements.
• Oracle Database Cloud: Offered as a cloud service, providing flexibility, scalability and pay-as-you-go pricing, making it an attractive option for companies seeking agility and cost savings.

The Oracle Database 23ai version introduces a series of new features and improvements aimed at enhancing database productivity, security and performance. Key updates include:

• Automatic Transaction Quarantine: Failed transactions are quarantined for DBA review after a crash, allowing the database to reopen faster and reduce downtime.
• Timezone Conversion for Dates: In 23ai, you can now choose whether the sysdate and systimestamp use the OS time, as in previous versions, or the database’s timezone.
• SQL Analysis Report: Generates reports on SQL query performance, helping optimize queries by providing insights into execution time, resource usage and optimization suggestions.
• Space Management: With DBMS_SPACE support in 23ai, you can reduce tablespace size by automatically moving segments to free up allocated disk space.
• Schema Privileges: Simplifies privilege management by allowing permissions to be granted directly on schemas, rather than individual objects, removing the need for “grant any” privileges.
• Real-Time SPM: Monitors running queries and provides execution plan details. If performance regresses, the previous plan is tested and automatically locked in to maintain process stability.
• Read-Only User and Session: Enables the creation/alteration of users with read-only access without removing existing grants. You can also set sessions to read-only mode using alter session, useful for preventing data changes by certain users or sessions.
• Lock-Free Reservations: Enhances performance for concurrent transactions by reducing lock usage for addition/subtraction operations, like inventory control and counters.
• Pluggable Database Hybrid Read-Only Mode: Allows pluggable databases to be set to read-only mode for local users while enabling write access for global users, helpful for controlling changes based on access mode.
• Oracle Fast Ingest: Speeds up data ingestion by up to 77%, improving performance for ETL processes and IoT devices using the large pool.
• Developer Role: Simplifies application development by providing a set of privileges necessary for development, reducing the need for developers to request individual privileges.
• Blockchain Tables: Tables based on blockchain technology, ensuring immutability and traceability of stored data for applications that require data integrity and security.
• Automatic Transaction Rollback: Categorizes transactions as low, medium, or high priority, and automatically rolls back lower-priority transactions if they block higher-priority transactions for too long.
• Audit Columns: Allows specific columns to be audited, reducing the audit volume by generating logs only for changes made to designated columns, helping with compliance.
• True Cache: Improves query performance by acting as a consistent cache on a separate server closer to the client, optimizing response times.
• SQL Firewall: Only allows execution of SQL commands on the database if they are on a whitelist, protecting the database from SQL injection attacks used by hackers to insert malicious code.
• Oracle Data Guard per Pluggable Database: In previous versions, the standby applied to the entire CDB. In 23ai, standbys can be created at the PDB level, enabling selective primary/standby configurations across servers.
• SQL Transpiler: Improves performance by embedding function code directly into a query, avoiding repeated PL/SQL function calls for each row.

Why Upgrade to Oracle Database 23ai?
Upgrading offers several benefits, including:

• Performance Improvement: New optimizations and features result in superior performance.
• Enhanced Security: New security tools help protect your data.
• Integration with Modern Technologies: Improved integration with cloud, AI, and other technologies.
• Long-Term Support: Oracle 23ai provides extended support, ensuring stability and security.

In summary, Oracle Database 23ai represents a significant advancement in database technology, offering a range of new features and enhancements that can benefit businesses of all sizes.