What are the New Features of Oracle Database 18c?

With the release of Oracle Database 18c, you can expect new features and functionality.

Are these additional features enough for you to decide on upgrading to the latest database version from the technology giant? These features include:

Availability features of Oracle Database 18c

1. Non-logged blocks are now automatically corrected using an Oracle Data Guard standby database.
2. Oracle Data Guard’s MIRA (multi-instance redo apply) now supports block change tracking for RMAN.
3. You can now create shadow table spaces to ensure that your data is protected. You will no longer use ADG to protect your data from lost write instances.
4. If you have non-cloud database backups, you can still use it after moving to the cloud.
5. With Oracle Database 18c, your shards and catalogs can be a PDB file.
6. You can now specify where your data is going to be stored in a shard.
7. If you have multi-shard queries, you can now provide consistency levels.
8. You can now manually terminate run-away queries without having to stop the session.

 

Data warehousing and big data features

9. Oracle 18c expands on the approximate query processing that you use in Oracle 12c.
10. Oracle Database 18c now supports LOBs and related features & functionality when used with Big Data SQL and Oracle Database In-Memory.

 

General database features

11. You now have two new parameters to copy a pluggable database (PDB) in Oracle Data Guard: STANDBY_PDB_SOURCE_FILE_DIRECTORY and STANDBY_PDB_SOURCE_FILE_DBLINK.
12. You now have another PDB lockdown profile enhancement, giving you three lockdown profiles: PUBLIC_DBAAS, PRIVATE_DBAAS, and SAAS.
13. Improved PDB refresh with switchover now being supported by 18c.
14. YOU point in time backups now has a library with the PDB Snapshot Carousel. This gives you eight copies of your PDB, backed up every 24 hours.
15. The Oracle Database password file is now located in the ORACLE_BASE file path.
16. You can now install a read only ORACLE_HOME using roohctl -enable or dbca.
17. Oracle 18c supports the merging and consolidation of partitions, as well as sub-partitions online.
18. The SQL Performance Analyzer can now run in parallel with your SQL processes.

 

Performance features

19. In the event of low memory, Oracle Database 18c can take out IM columns that are not accessed frequently out of memory.
20. You can now use Oracle Database In-Memory features and functionality for external tables.
21. The system global area has a memoptimized pool, which allows you to do quick searches when the fast lookup option is on. Memoptimized Rowstore will affect those queries that are most often made.
22. You can clone pluggable databases on Oracle Automatic Storage Management using flex diskgroup.
23. You no longer have to do a restricted mount to convert normal or redundant disk groups to flex disk groups.

 

Security features of Oracle Database 18c

24. Oracle Database 18c is now directly integrated with Microsoft Active Directory Services.

 

Other features

25. There are now additional initialization commands such as:

• WALLET_ROOT
• UNIFIED_AUDIT_SYSTEMLOG
• TDE_CONFIGURATION
• STANDBY_PDB_SOURCE_FILE_DIRECTORY
• STANDBY_PDB_SOURCE_FILE_DBLINK
• PRIVATE_TEMP_TABLE_PREFIX
• PARALLEL_MIN_DEGREE
• OPTIMIZER_IGNORE_PARALLEL_HINTS
• OPTIMIZER_IGNORE_HINTS
• MULTISHARD_QUERY_DATA_CONSISTENCY
• MEMOPTIMIZE_POOL_SIZE
• INMEMORY_OPTIMIZED_ARITHMETIC
• INMEMORY_AUTOMATIC_LEVEL
• FORWARD_LISTENER
• ADG_ACCOUNT_INFO_TRACKING

 

26. Instead of using dbms_lock, you can just run dbms_session.sleep to suspend a session.

Photo courtesy of Oracle.