Oracle Database 23ai brings the power of AI to the enterprise

Oracle Database 23ai, the latest release of Oracle’s converged database is now generally available as a broad range of cloud services. This long-term support release includes Oracle AI Vector Search and more than 300 additional major features focused on simplifying the use of AI with data, accelerating app development, and running mission-critical workloads. The new AI Vector Search capabilities enable customers to securely combine search for documents, images, and other unstructured data with search on private business data, without moving or duplicating it. Oracle Database 23ai brings AI algorithms to where the data lives, instead of having to move the data to where the AI algorithm lives. This allows AI to run in real-time in Oracle databases, and greatly 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 enterprises worldwide, and because of the importance of the breakthrough AI technology in this release, we are renaming it to Oracle Database 23ai,” said Juan Loaiza, executive vice president, Mission-Critical Database Technologies, Oracle. “AI Vector Search combined with new unified development paradigms and mission-critical capabilities makes it simple for developers and data professionals to build intelligent apps, increase developer productivity, and run mission-critical workloads.”

“We are happy to see AI Vector Search added to Oracle Database,” said Shinichiro Otsuka, NRI Certified IT Architect, Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. “We appreciate that we can run AI Vector Search in the same Oracle Database as our other workloads, which allows us to provide a reliable and secure solution.”

New capabilities in Oracle Database 23ai include:

AI for Data

• Oracle AI Vector Search: Makes it simple for customers to search documents, images, and relational data based on their conceptual content rather than specific words, pixels, or data values. AI Vector Search makes it possible for LLMs to query private business data using a natural language interface and helps LLMs provide more accurate and relevant results. In addition, AI Vector Search allows developers to easily add semantic search capabilities to both new applications and existing applications. All the mission-critical features of Oracle Database now work transparently with AI vectors, enabling Oracle customers to run AI Vector Search for even their most mission-critical applications. By storing and processing business and vector data in the same high-performance database, customers can seamlessly integrate AI Vector Search into existing business applications to implement new and innovative AI use cases—without compromising data security.

• Oracle Exadata System Software 24ai: Exadata smart storage accelerates AI Vector Search by up to orders of magnitude. This enables applications to run AI Vector Search for both large volumes of data and high numbers of users.

• OCI GoldenGate 23ai: GoldenGate enables heterogeneous data integration and high availability across cloud data stores. GoldenGate 23ai delivers new capabilities that allow vectors to be replicated in real-time across heterogeneous vector stores. It also allows enterprises to quickly bring AI to 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 fast AI search.

Accelerating App Development

• JSON Relational Unification: JSON Relational Duality addresses the mismatch between how some applications want to use data versus how relational databases store data. Developers have been able to read and write relational data using SQL for decades. Now they can also use JSON to easily retrieve and store the same data using REST or native JSON APIs without compromising the data consistency, storage efficiency, and flexibility inherent in the relational data model. With JSON Relational Duality Views, developers and customers no longer have to choose a single data model for their data. They get the benefits of both the JSON and relational data models on the same data.

• Graph Relational Unification: Operational Property Graph enables developers to easily build applications that navigate the connections between and within data using property graph queries. Property Graph queries can run on top of all types of data 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 ISO standard SQL/PGQ syntax. This makes it easier and faster to create applications that analyze the connections, patterns, and relations between data such as between multiple financial transactions.

• Free Developer Databases: Always Free Autonomous Database provides two free Autonomous Database Serverless instances in the cloud for an unlimited time, with pre-integrated tools including 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, enabling developers to easily download and try the newest features, including AI Vector Search, JSON Relational Duality, and Operational Property Graph with SQL.

Mission-Critical Data

• Oracle Globally Distributed Database with RAFT: Oracle Globally Distributed Database allows data in the cloud to be stored across multiple physical databases in multiple locations instead of one database while exposing a single database image to applications. It is used to achieve hyperscale and to help address data residency and data sovereignty requirements. Now, RAFT replication between the physical databases enables automatic failover with zero data loss in single digit seconds. This is critical when building cloud-scale distributed databases that must achieve ultra-high scalability and availability. Integrating replication inside the database 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 in-memory, always consistent, application transparent, high-performance middle-tier cache. Oracle True Cache improves application response times while reducing the load on database servers. Unlike other mid-tier caches, True Cache data is automatically kept transactionally consistent at every point-in-time. True Cache does not require developers to write code to populate and manage the data in the cache, which makes it easy to deploy between applications and the database. True Cache brings the rich functionality of Oracle Database to mid-tier caches. All Oracle SQL, JSON, and Graph query capabilities are available in True Cache.

• In-Database SQL Firewall: Oracle SQL Firewall helps protect databases against unauthorized SQL, including SQL injection attacks. Built into Oracle Database 23ai, Oracle SQL Firewall provides a scalable, performant, and difficult-to-bypass way to address risks from hackers and compromised insider accounts. In addition, organizations can use Oracle Data Safe to manage multiple SQL firewalls to dramatically reduce the cost of deployment.

“The rise of generative AI has seen a renewed emphasis on vector databases as a highly efficient means of searching data, both in unstructured and structured sources. However, as we know from experience, isolated databases become yet another data resource to manage and keep synchronized,” said Carl Olofson, research vice president, Data Management Software, IDC. “With the need to fine tune LLMs with business data using RAG techniques, out-of-date data is not acceptable. Oracle Database 23ai aims to solve this problem by enabling the coordination of vectors with customer’s data using AI Vector Search. It provides an integrated set of functionality customers need to ground their generative AI, keeping the content current and relevant as they move from projects to production, leveraging all the advances inherent in the database. With generative AI innovations in Oracle Database 23ai, and specifically with AI Vector Search, Oracle has given customers a great leap forward, providing an all-in-one solution.”