Oracle Database 21C features

 

Oracle Database 21C features 

Oracle Database 21c is now available, it is the new release of most popular database. available  in Oracle Cloud as Database Service Virtual Machine for RAC as well as single instance  Bare Metal Service . 

It can be available as Autonomous Database Free Tier Service but only in some regions which are  

• Ashburn (IAD)
• Phoenix (PHX)
• Frankfurt (FRA) 
• London (LHR) 

The oracle database 21C will be available  for on-prem platforms including  Linux ,Windows and ExaData.

As usual,  It offers best performance, high scalability and availability and off course security for all their operational, analytical and other workloads. The developer can take the advantages of all Oracle Database 21c key capabilities for example 

• ACID transactions
• read consistency
•  parallel and online backups and many more

They can  develop in applications without to worry about data persistence.

It supports different data models and access methods. Not only tradition data types but other new data types supported as well for example JSON. Fully support for operational and analytical data and highly workload.

Lets take a look What is  New Oracle Database 21c

This latest release introduces a number of new enhancements and features . surely, it will improves the productivity of developer, analyst and data scientist and better  query performance

Below are some of the key features for details you may take a look links (at last for more details)

Blockchain Tables

 Oracle Database 21c introduce Blockchain Tables. The blockchain tables operate like any normal heap table with a number of different options/features. one of these are that rows are cryptographically hashed as they are inserted into the table, ensuring that the row can no longer be changed later date.

It will be like an insert only table  and users would not be able to use update or delete action for these  Blockchain Table rows as well as truncation of this data would not be allowed to user but it dropping of partitions or dropping Blockchain Tables can be done in certain time limits. So the data accuracy will be high for these Blockchain tables 

Native JSON Datatype

Oracle introduced support for JSON in Oracle Database 12c, This new data type allow to store the JSON data like other data types such as CHAR, DATE , CLOB etc.

 This will help developers to build applications with the flexibility e.g.  developer/users could query JSON documents using the normal  SQL, take advantage of advanced analytics, index individual attributes or even whole documents. They can process billions of JSON documents in parallel. A Tool also provided by Oracle that can use to discover what attributes make up the JSON documents and  create relational views on top of these collections. 

it can access with a a NoSQL database with the SODA  APIs by other technologies such as  Java, Node.js, Python, C and REST.

it offering a Native data type, "JSON". so  instead of parse JSON on select or update operations, It is more faster while performing transaction with JSON data type .

we can use datatype JSON (same like date, number ) while creating tables. Not only the data type introduce but new functions available for JSON data type such as JSON_TRANSFORM, that can add / remove multiple attributes in a document for a single operation 

Not only this but integration with other utilities as well for JSON data type, these utilities are datapump and Oracle GoldenGate. 

JavaScript execution 

JavaScript is a famous scripting language use in  web applications and mobile apps for good and enhanced user interaction . This scripting language use both in client side and server side. It use in many large web application along with JSON and REST. Many libraries are also available for this like node.js.

Now developers can execute JavaScript code snippets inside the database, It will  allows them to execute short computational tasks easily expressed in JavaScript, no need to move data in browser or any mid-tier for execution and bring it back to the database.

The Multilingual Engine  in Oracle Database 21c will automatically maps JavaScript data types to Oracle Database data types and vice versa hence no need to data type conversion any more. A built-in JavaScript module available with PL SQL and SQL to execute javascript code snips 

The  APEX developers use JavaScript as first class language for their APEX applications along with PL/SQL and SQL 

SQL Macros

the complexity of SQL is increasing day by day due to high data, complex application etc. In many cases it can not be done by SQL so the developer use PL/SQL code to achieve the results. Its good but some time it effect performance and longer code libraries  

The SQL Macros solve this problem by allowing SQL expressions and table functions to be replaced by calls to stored procedures which return a string literal to be inserted in the SQL we want to execute. a simple concept and one that C programmers will be familiar with. The following trivial example shows it in action.

 the new SQL_MACRO will be use for that you may search on that for more details

In-Memory Enhancements

Oracle Database In-Memory is unique in that it allows users to benefit from both approaches. The  users can run their applications unchanged and Oracle Database In-Memory will maintain a columnar store supporting  fast real-time analytical queries. 

there are three improvements introduce in Oracle Database 21c to enhance performance and ease of use for In-Memory execution which are as below:

• Database In-Memory Vector Joins 
• Self-Managing In-Memory Column Store
• In-Memory Hybrid Columnar Scans 

 

some of interesting points for DBAs,  analysts, data scientists and developers

• Expression based init.ora parameters : It's now possible to base database parameters (init.ora) on calculations made on the configuration of the system
• Automatic Zone Maps : Oracle Database 21c on Exadata can now automatically create Zone Maps based on the predicates used in queries. 
• In-Database Machine Learning (ML) algorithms built into Oracle Database enables data scientists to leverage the power of Oracle Database to build predictive models (using over 30 ML algorithms) running directly on data 
• Persistent Memory (PMEM) Support : Oracle Database 21c includes support for PMEM file systems that can offer significant latency and bandwidth improvements over traditional file systems that use SSD or spinning disks.
• AutoML : Oracle Database 21c makes it even simpler for data scientists and analysts to take advantage of in-database machine learning by providing a Python machine learning interfaces to the database. 
• Sharding Enhancements : To make it easier to develop Java applications against Oracle Sharding