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?