Tag Archives: 23ai

Oracle Database 23c now Oracle Database 23ai

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Announcement

In case you missed it, yesterday 2nd May 2024 at 5pm (GMT) Larry Ellison and Juan Loaiza announced Oracle Database 23ai under the banner of “AI + Converged Data: Oracle’s Strategy for Data Management”. You can see the announcement here:
AI and Converged Data: Oracle’s Strategy for Data Management – YouTube

I was conveniently at the UKOUG Technology Strategy Day (LinkedIn post here), where Scott Hays, Steve Ramsay, Dominic Giles and Killian Lynch plus others were. They all alluded to big announcement that evening but for obvious reasons couldn’t share the details. But in the leading hours, I had seen posts on social media with the “23ai” name, which lead me to believe the rename was going to be part of the announcement 🙂 Post 5pm, was able to speak freely with Dom and Kilian and it totally makes sense, we’re in the era of AI, it’s the latest buzz word, we were due a letter change for some while now! Oracle’s slogan is “Bring #AI algorithms to where your data lives with Oracle Database 23ai”.

Versions over the eras

8i and 9i were for the era of internet, 10g and 11g for the era of grid, and finally 12c, 18c, 19c, 21c and 23c (up to 23.3) for era of cloud. 23ai is actually from 23.4 onwards and the release that will be the mainstream General Available (GA) release.

What’s New

There so much that new, which Oracle have broken down into 3 areas, see below:

AI for Data

  • Oracle AI Vector Search
  • Oracle Exadata System Software 24ai
  • OCI GoldenGate 23ai

Accelerating App Development

  • JSON Relational Unification
  • Graph Relational Unification
  • Free Developer Databases

Mission-Critical Data

  • Oracle Globally Distributed Database with RAFT
  • Oracle True Cache
  • In-Database SQL Firewall

More details of each feature is available here.

Support

Oracle Database 19c as of writing has Extended Support (waived) is till 30th April 2026, so customers have 2 years to move from 19c to 23ai. Latest dates can be found here:
Release Schedule of Current Database Releases (Doc ID 742060.1)

Availability

Oracle Database 23ai is only available on Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, OCI Exadata Database Service, OCI Base Database Service and Azure Oracle Database Service. It also available on Always Free Autonomous Database as well for download in the Autonomous Database 23ai Container Image and Oracle Database 23ai Free. For the rest we have to wait for GA which I suspect is very imminent, weeks not months.

Where to get more info

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Thanks

Zed DBA (Zahid Anwar)