The world around us is changing and new stuff in the Oracle database arena is nowadays released on patch level. Although not many new features have been added, if you compare this with a mayor version release, really great new features have been added!
To give you an almost complete (I think, main) key feature overview:
- > Â In Memory Column Store
- > Â In-Memory Columnar Compression
- > Â Data Pump Support for the In-Memory Column Store
- > Â Force Full Database Caching mode
- > Â Big Table Cache
- > Â Buffer I/O handling (temperature-based, parallel query object-level algorithm)
- > Â Attribute-clustered tables
- >Â Â Support for Partitioned Hash Clusters
- > Â Native Database JSON data support
- > Â New Database JSON language support: “JSON Path Expressions”
- > Â Preserving the open mode of PDBs when the CDB restarts
- >Â Â Flashback Archive Support for Multitenant Container Databases
- > Â The USER_TABLESPACES clause of the CREATE PLUGGABLE DATABASE statement
- > Â Create a PDB by cloning a non-CDB
- > Â The pdb_logging_clause of the CREATE|ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE statement
- > Â The pdb_force_logging_clause of the ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE statement
- > Â The STANDBYS clause of the CREATE PLUGGABLE DATABASE statement
- > Â Oracle Clusterware support for the Diagnosability Framework
- > Â READ object privilege and READ ANY TABLE system privilege
- > Â SHA-2 support for password and cryptographic hash functions
- > Â Audit Trail Cleanup in Read-Only Databases
- > Â New background processes (to support the new features)
- > Â VECTOR GROUP BY aggregation
- > Â INMEMORY hints
- >Â Â Data Pump TRANSFORM support for INMEMORY
- >Â Â Behavior changes in Oracle Spatial
[List is based on, among others, the “Oracle Database Administrator’s Guide”]
A very short list, if you would compare it with the advertised list of 500+ new features in Oracle 12c (release 12.1.0.1.0), but as you know by now, some features on this shortlist will make a big big difference.
Very roughly you could make the distinction between new “In Memory” possibilities, “JSON” and “Multitenant” additions (eg. features/extendability), besides some small extra’s like the “READ” object privilege/READ ANY TABLE system privilege (the READ privilege on an object enables a user to select from an object without providing the user with any other privileges).
In my mind the “In Memory Column Store” and “Native Database JSON Support” features are the most exiting ones, regarding the possibilities they open up to do more with your data and achieving performance improvements. Regarding the latter, I am not only thinking in terms of the obvious OTLP and DDS request handling but also how to achieve performance improvements in heavy performance environments with complex datatypes (XML?!), multidimensional data or big data ((unstructured data) challenges.
So…a lot to come here shortly…
Download your 12.1.0.2 release now from http://edelivery.oracle.com
