Oracle Database 23ai, the new version of Oracle’s converged database, is now available worldwide in a wide range of cloud services. This long-term support release includes Oracle AI Vector Search and over 300 additional major features focused on simplifying the use of AI with data, accelerating application development, and running mission-critical workloads . New features in AI Vector Search allow customers to securely combine searching for documents, images and other unstructured data with searching for private business data, without moving or duplicating them. Oracle Database 23ai brings AI algorithms to where the data is, instead of having to move data to where the AI algorithm is. This allows AI to run in real-time in Oracle databases and significantly improves the effectiveness, efficiency and security of AI.
Oracle Database 23ai is available in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) on Oracle Exadata Database Service, Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, and Oracle Base Database Service, as well as on Oracle Database@Azure.
“Oracle Database 23ai is a game changer for businesses everywhere. “Because of the importance of this release’s breakthrough AI technology, we’re renaming it Oracle Database 23ai,” explained Juan Loaiza, Oracle’s executive vice president of strategic database technologies. “AI Vector Search, combined with new unified development paradigms and mission-critical capabilities, enables developers and data professionals to easily build intelligent applications, increase developer productivity, and run mission-critical workloads. »
“We are excited about the addition of AI Vector Search to Oracle Database,” said Shinichiro Otsuka, NRI Certified IT Architect at Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. “We like the ability to run AI Vector Search in the same Oracle Database as our other workloads, allowing us to provide a reliable and secure solution. »
New features in Oracle Database 23ai include:
AI for data
Oracle AI Vector Search: Enables customers to easily search documents, images, and relational data based on their conceptual content rather than specific words, pixels, or data values. AI Vector Search allows LLMs (Large Language Models) to query private business data using a natural language interface and helps LLMs deliver more accurate and relevant results. Additionally, AI Vector Search allows developers to easily add semantic search capabilities to new and existing apps. All core Oracle Database capabilities now work seamlessly with AI Vectors, enabling Oracle customers to run AI Vector Search for their most mission-critical applications. By storing and processing operational and vector data in the same high-performance database, customers can easily integrate AI Vector Search into existing business applications to implement innovative new AI use cases, without compromising security Datas.
Oracle Exadata System Software 24ai: Exadata intelligent storage accelerates AI Vector Search by orders of magnitude. This allows applications to run AI Vector Search both for large volumes of data and for large numbers of users.
OCI GoldenGate 23ai: GoldenGate enables the integration of heterogeneous data and high availability in cloud databanks. GoldenGate 23ai offers new features that enable real-time vector replication in heterogeneous vector banks. This feature also allows businesses to quickly integrate AI into all their data with minimal risk by replicating data from their existing databases to Oracle Database 23ai where it can be vectorized and indexed for rapid AI searchability.
Acceleration of application development
JSON Relational Unification: JSON Relational Duality fixes the mismatch between how some applications want to use data and how relational databases store data. For decades, developers have been able to read and write relational data using SQL. Now, they can also use JSON to easily extract and store the same data using native REST or JSON APIs without compromising the data consistency, storage efficiency, and flexibility inherent in the relational data model. With views with JSON Relational Duality, developers and clients no longer have to choose a single data model for their data. They get the benefits of JSON and relational data models on the same data.
Relational Graph Unification: Operational Property Graph allows developers to easily create applications that navigate connections between and within data using property graph queries. Property graph queries can be run on all data types supported by Oracle Database, including relational data, JSON data, and spatial data. Developers can define a graph model directly on operational data and query the graph using the new standard ISO SQL/PGQ syntax. This makes it easier and faster to build applications that analyze connections, patterns, and relationships between data, for example between multiple financial transactions.
Free Developer Databases: Always Free Autonomous Database provides two free serverless Autonomous Database instances in the cloud for unlimited time, with pre-integrated tools such as Oracle APEX, Select AI, Database Tools, Machine Learning, and Graph. The Autonomous Database Free container image and Oracle Database Free now support Oracle Database 23ai, making it easy for developers to download and try new features including AI Vector Search, JSON Relational Duality, and Operational Property Graph with SQL .
Strategic data
Oracle Globally Distributed Database with RAFT: Oracle Globally Distributed Database allows data to be stored in the cloud across multiple physical databases in multiple locations instead of a single database while exposing a single database image to applications. This feature is used to achieve very large scale and to meet data residency and data sovereignty requirements. Now RAFT replication between physical databases enables automatic failover without data loss in seconds. This is essential when building distributed, cloud-scale databases that need to achieve ultra-high scalability and availability. Integrating in-database replication with the RAFT-based protocol simplifies the creation and administration of fault-tolerant distributed databases and reduces the need for manual processes to maintain active-active availability.
Oracle True Cache: True Cache is an always-constant, application-transparent, high-performance in-memory middle tier cache. Oracle True Cache improves application response time while reducing the load on database servers. Unlike other mid-tier caches, True Cache data is automatically maintained transactionally consistent at every point in time. True Cache does not require developers to write code to populate and manage data in the cache, making it easier to deploy between applications and the database. True Cache brings the rich capabilities of Oracle Database to mid-tier caches. All Oracle SQL, JSON, and Graph query functionality is available in True Cache.
SQL Firewall in the Database: Oracle SQL Firewall helps protect databases against unauthorized SQL statements, including SQL injection attacks. Integrated with Oracle Database 23ai, Oracle SQL Firewall provides a scalable, high-performance, and hard-to-evade way to address the risks of hackers and compromised internal accounts. Additionally, businesses can use Oracle Data Safe to manage multiple SQL firewalls to significantly reduce deployment cost.
“The rise of generative AI has brought vector databases back to the forefront as a highly effective way to search for data, both in unstructured and structured sources. However, as we know from experience, isolated databases become another data resource to manage and synchronize,” noted Carl Olofson, research vice president of Data Management Software at IDC. “Given the need to refine LLMs with enterprise data using RAG techniques, outdated data is not acceptable. Oracle Database 23ai aims to solve this problem by enabling coordination of vectors with customer data using AI Vector Search. It provides an integrated set of capabilities that customers need to build their generative AI, keeping their content up-to-date and relevant as they move from projects to production, leveraging all of the inherent advanced elements to the database. With the generative AI innovations in Oracle Database 23ai, particularly with AI Vector Search, Oracle has enabled customers to take a big leap forward by providing them with an all-in-one solution. »
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