Oracle Database 23c
Oracle has announced the availability of Database 23c Free for developers. The new release arrives a year and a half after the last one, 21c, and introduces important innovations designed to simplify the work of developers and prepare for the release of the version with long-term support.Freepik
br> Today the power is in the hands of the developers: Oracle wants to allow them to define the entire ecosystem and provide them with maximum freedom of development. “We are excited to give developers immediate access to the world's most advanced database technologies for developing and running modern applications,” said Juan Loaiza, executive vice president, mission-critical database technologies at Oracle.
JSON relation duality
Among the new arrivals, the most important feature of the release is undoubtedly the JSON relation duality: the new Oracle functionality combines document representation in JSON with the power of the relational one, simplifying data access and modifications. Developers can take advantage of both worlds while maintaining access to a single reliable source of data.Records, saved as relational model table rows, can be read, written, and updated using either approaches interchangeably: transactions comply with ACID principles and concurrency controls to ensure data consistency and avoid duplication. Developers no longer have to worry about object-relational mappings: Oracle takes care of it.
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JSON-relational duality views can be defined following GraphQL syntax. Table rows are normalized and assembled to generate a JSON document that is easier to use and update. The changes made to the view are then propagated to the table, always ensuring data consistency.
The feature will be decisive in facilitating developments, so much so that it has been described as "one of the most important innovations in computing in the last 20 years" by Carl Olofson, research vice president, Data Management Software at IDC. “This release finally gives developers a chance to experience a feature that unifies and synchronizes the relational and document worlds,” he said.
Other new features in Oracle Database 23c
Among other features of the release we find the introduction of the Javascript Stored Procedures based on GraalVM : Oracle Database 23c will support the Javascript code and will also allow to load the libraries on the database. The company also added standard JSON schemas to validate JSON document structures.Freepik
Developers will also be able to build property graph applications with standard SQL support for queries and use Kafka APIs to run applications on Oracle Database Transactional Event Queues.
Finally, the company introduced SQL Domains to centrally document data usage and overcome data type incompatibilities, and Annotations to store database metadata along with records: developers can now annotate and consult common data model attributes, facilitating knowledge access.
The release is downloadable as a Docker Image, VirtualBox VM, or Linux RPM installation file without registering or logging in. The Windows version is coming soon.