Oracle is excited to announce the availability of Oracle Database 23ai (Release Update 23.5) for Oracle Database Appliance, empowering customers to harness the latest advancements in data management technology. Oracle Database 23ai is the latest long-term support release and introduces a comprehensive set of innovative features and capabilities, headlined by AI Vector Search. It also features a wide range of enhancements that further solidify Oracle’s leadership in database technology.

Please see the following video from EVP Juan Loaiza for a concise and informative overview of the Oracle Database 23ai:



The full list of new features and enhancements in Oracle Database 23ai is quite extensive. Take a look at Dom Giles’ blog posts announcing Oracle Database 23ai, which cover many key improvements. New features include JSON Relational Duality, True Cache, Lock-Free Reservations, Priority Transactions, Java Script Stored Procedures, built-in SQL Firewall, and over 300 more, all meticulously crafted to increase productivity, efficiency, performance, availability, and security.

Oracle Database 23ai introduces impressive new capabilities to enable new and existing applications to search data semantically and combine the meaning of data with the business data already stored within the database. We call this capability AI Vector Search. Please see Doug Hood and Ranjan Priyadarshi in their blog post explaining AI Vector Search. 

In the following section, we’ll focus on why the Oracle Database Appliance platform is the ideal entry-level appliance for running your Oracle Database 23ai deployment.

Easy to deploy and maintain
Oracle Database Appliance is an Oracle Engineered System that saves time and money by simplifying deployment, management, and support of database solutions for organizations of every size. For example, Oracle Database Appliance can deploy a Real Application Cluster (RAC) database in under two hours, and users can update the entire HW and SW stack (firmware, operating system, Grid Infrastructure, and Databases) with pre-tested quarterly bundle patches.

Optimized for Oracle Database
Oracle Database Appliance integrates software, compute, storage, and network resources to deliver database services for online transaction processing (OLTP), in-memory databases, Artificial Intelligence, and data warehousing applications. It provides software capabilities such as integrated Cloud Backup, Data Guard, rapid database clones, and virtualization to run databases and applications.

Affordable Entry-Level Engineered System
Oracle Database Appliance supports both Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition. Enterprise deployments that require the enhanced feature set of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition can take advantage of a unique capacity-on-demand database software licensing model to quickly scale utilized processor cores without any hardware upgrades.

Fully Redundant Integrated System 
Providing access to information 24/7 and protecting databases from unforeseen and planned downtime can be challenging for many organizations. Oracle Database Appliance X10-HA is designed for simplicity and reduces that element of risk and uncertainty to help customers deliver higher availability for their databases.

Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 (SE2) support with Multi-Chip Module (MCM) processors
Oracle Database Appliance X10 is the only platform with MCM processors that supports Oracle Database SE2. Refer to the ODA Licensing Guide “About License Options for Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 on Oracle Database Appliance” for the licensing rules.

Conclusion
Oracle Database Appliance is the ideal entry-level database platform for customers who need an easy-to-manage system to run their Oracle Database environment. Now, with support for Oracle Database 23ai workloads—including AI vector processing, analytics, and transactions—small and medium-sized customers and large corporations with departmental applications or geographically distributed locations can benefit from the latest technological advances that Oracle Database 23ai offers.

For more information on Oracle Database Appliance, take a look at the following resources: