Oracle 18c is on the cloud now

After Valentine Day, Oracle officially released Oracle Database 18c on the Oracle Cloud and Oracle Engineered Systems on Feb.16. If you still follow the old Oracle release pattern, Oracle 18c is equivalent to Oracle 12c Release 2 (12.2.0.2).

To get to know more about this release, besides reading Oracle official blog above, you can digest the following blogs from several Oracle gurus.

• Oracle Database 18c Released (Maria Colgan)

• Oracle Database 18c released for Oracle Cloud and )Engineered Systems (Mike Dietrich)

• Oracle Database 18c Released : How to Get Started (Tim Hall)

If you want to know the new features of this release, you can take a look at the following guide:

https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/18/newft/new-features.html

Since this new release is not available for on-premise environment yet, you can try it with LiveSQL even you don't have Oracle Cloud account:

https://livesql.oracle.com/apex/livesql/file/index.html

Oracle 18c is coming soon

Yesterday (Jan.22, 2018) the email alert from Oracle subjected on "Oracle Support HOT Topics" had an item "Release Schedule of Current Database Releases" with last updated date on Jan 19, 2018.

When I accessed the link, it directed to the Metalink Note:742060.1.  Under the section "What's New?", you will see the following information:

• 19-Jan-2018 - added release 18 to the table

So for every release schedule table, a column for Oracle release 18 is added. From the schedule, we can get:

• Oracle 18c for Oracle Public Cloud Releases will be available at 1Q2018 (means some time within the 1st quarter of 2018). And the same release time is applied to On-Premises Engineered Systems including Oracle Database Appliance and Exadata.
• Oracle 18c for On-Premises Server (including client) will be available on H2CY2018 (means some time within second 6 months of 2018) for Linux x86-64, Solaris 64-bit (SPARC and x86), HP-UX Itanium, Windows 64-bit and IBM AIX/Linux platforms.

To help user plan ahead, Oracle also provides a roadmap of patch sets for Oracle Database major release 11.1 and beyond, "showing planned release dates and the duration of their support lives in relationship to the overall release life. The chart is by nature somewhat simplified so be sure to read the details below it to help you interpret it correctly."

The chart has been updated with Oracle 18c(was 12.2.0.2) and 19c(was 12.2.0.3).

Self-driving Oracle coming, so where will be the driver (DBA)?

Did you attend Oracle OpenWorld this year and listen to the keynote speech from Larry? If no, did you watch the following recorded keynote video?

Yes. It was all about Oracle Autonomous Database, the World's #1 Self-Driving Database. Certainly, Larry didn't forget to poke Amazon (AWS).

Not long ago, Oracle has changed its release schedule/name, so Oracle 12.2.0.2 becomes Oracle 18c.

Now it becomes clear, Oracle 18c is actually the foundation of  Oracle Autonomous Database service. As Oracle describes, "Powered by Oracle Database 18c, the next generation of the industry-leading database, Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud offers total automation based on machine learning and eliminates human labor, human error, and manual tuning."

Regarding the role change of Oracle DBA, there has never been one straight answer. With the recent announcement of self-driving database from Larry, the debate has been getting intense. So where will be driver? In other words, the Oracle DBA will totally disappear?

Tim has offered his thoughts about it 

Less time on boring shit. More time on important shit!

This is firmly targeted at removing the need for operational DBAs. A role that *you* should have already automated out of your organisation anyway. If you’ve not, then you have failed.

It should be obvious that the Development DBAs are sitting pretty here. The thinkers are safe. The recipe followers are not. Your mantra from now on should be…

Keep learning. Keep improving yourself. Keep your job!

and expressed his disappointment at the reaction to the Autonomous Database. 

"
As I expected, very few people seem to have actually listened to what was said in the keynote and I suspect many didn’t even read the entirety of my blog post. Instead, they saw “Autonomous Database” and launched into “it’ll never work” mode. It’s like people want it to fail and want to keep doing the same old boring crap for the rest of their lives. I am hopeful this suite of services will be the start of something interesting, but time will tell. Fingers crossed!"

Larry did provide his ideas on the "Database Professionals:  Evolution of Skill Set" in his keynote speech.

Another blog echoed the same reaction about the "Death of the Oracle DBA". 

The DBA role has changed. Indeed, if your Oracle DBAs are still spending significant time on things such as space and tablespace management then it’s time to look at how your Oracle DBA support is delivered! But for all the activities that have diminished or evaporated over the past 20 years new tasks and challenges have appeared. 

What do you think?

Oracle Database Cloud 'How To' Webcast Series - YouTube Videos

Following is a link for a very good YouTube how to video on Oracle Cloud:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdtXkK5KBY55SLBlD39fS8530_QJB8d2f

It includes following videos:

• Choosing the Right Oracle Database Cloud Service

• Oracle Database Cloud Service Deployment Choices

• Oracle RAC on Oracle Database Cloud Services

• Oracle RAC on Oracle Database Cloud Bare Metal Services

• Oracle Database Cloud Services Security (Part 1)

• Oracle Database Cloud Services Security (Part 2)

• Service Management using the Cloud Console

• Enterprise Manager Cloud Control

• Application and Database Migration to Oracle Cloud

• Database Creation from Cloud Backup

• Oracle Database Backup Service Overview

• Pluggable Databases on Oracle Cloud

• Multitenant Application Containers

Don't wait for 12.2.0.2 anymore, but Oracle 18

According the latest Oracle note - Release Schedule of Current Database Releases (Doc ID 742060.1), Oracle has changed its release schedule/name since 12.2.0.2.

It means:

Oracle 12.2.0.2 = Oracle 18

Oracle 12.2.0.3 = Oracle 19

But it does say  "This may change in the future to Oracle 20 as the last release for 12.2. "

You can read 2 blogs from Mike about the change:

https://mikedietrichde.com/2017/08/09/news-new-oracle-database-release-schedule/

https://mikedietrichde.com/2017/08/10/thoughts-new-oracle-database-release-schedule/

DBCA fails to create 12.1.0.2 RAC database over 12.2 GI/ASM

When creating 12.1.0.2 RAC CDB on newly created 12.2.0.1 GI/ASM by using DBCA, the database creation failed with errors ORA-19504/.ORA-17502

By checking Oracle metalink, it is an Oracle bug (#21626377)  - RDBMS instance fails to identify the required disks to mount a disk group if compatible.asm of the diskgroup is higher than version of the software.

You can refer to the metalink note (Doc ID 21626377.8) for details. There are 2 ways to fix the issue:

1. Apply the BP 12.1.0.2.170418 (or later BPs) - 12.1.0.2.170718 (Jul 2017) Database Patch Set Update (DB PSU) - on Oracle 12.1.0.2 RDBMS home, so DBCA can create 12.1.0.2 database using the ASM diskgroup with compatible.asm set to 12.2.

2. Workaround 

- Create an ASM diskgroup with compatible.asm set to 12.1 and then try to create the 12.1 database.

Oracle 12.2 New Features Training Summary

From May 15 to 19, I took the training course - Oracle Database 12c R2: New Features for 12c R1 Administrators Ed 1 (5 days) at ExitCertified Toronto. The instructor was Eric Wong.

By considering that Oracle Database 12c Release 2 was only available outside the Cloud in March, this training was quite new. Except those early players on the cloud, inside Oracle or “hired” by Oracle, there was really not many people to use or test this new release.  

This 5-day course was really intensive. As described in the course outline, I was expected to learn the following knowledge:

Different from the Oracle training course I took before, this one focused more on practice (>=70%). The instructor really didn’t talk too much about any topics. Some of topics only had less than 5 slides.  I spent most of my 5 days to practice, precisely speaking, cut and pasted the commands from the PDF guide. So it is not hard for you to imagine how “intensive” the training was.

When you spent most of time to catch up the practice, there was really not much time and energy for you to digest the “New Features”. It will leave to us either reviewing the course materials again after training or recalling it when using the new features in our work. No matter which option, we need to spend more time to get familiar with those new features before we totally forget.

To briefly summarize what I learned in the training, I would like to draw several high-level points below:

• From database container (CDB) to application container – Oracle will make the database software more robust and agile to support application development.
• Make PDB as isolate/independent as possible (from CDB) in terms of resource management, performance management, availability (backup/recovery), portability, etc.
• Make database and related product more cloud-ready including security enhancement, monitoring (Grid Control), etc.
• Continue to enhance the security features including auditing, privilege control, data redaction, encryption, etc.
• Continue to enhance the performance improvement automation such as Optimizer Statistics Advisor.
• Continue to enhance the database availability and online operations including PDB hot clone, online redefinition, online DDL capabilities and partitioning.
• Continue to enhance the management tools including DB operations monitoring, SQL*Plus, SQLcl, ADR automatic space file management, etc.

There are something not covered in the training, but discussed or blogged by the SIG:

• Oracle Database 12c R2 Rapid Home Provisioning and Maintenance:

May 17, 2017 session: http://www.oracleracsig.org/events/oracle-database-12c-release-2-rapid-home-provisioning-and-maintenance/

Jan 13, 2016 (12c R1): http://www.oracleracsig.org/events/oracle-rapid-home-provisioning/

• Oracle 12c Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR)

       http://www.oracleracsig.org/events/oracle-12c-grid-infrastructure-management-repository-gimr-everything-you-wanted-to-know-2/

All in all, the best training materials for the new release are still the reference books from Oracle. Among them, it is the bible - Oracle Database Concepts, 12c Release 2 (12.2).