“Get SMART” – Oracle’s slogan urges customers to upgrade to the Oracle Database 12c. The new release allows companies to respond more intelligently to market developments and also reduces costs and risks.
SMART is short for “Simplifying IT infrastructures, Managing many databases as one, becoming more Agile, Reducing cost and risk whilst increasing revenues, and adopting the latest Technology platform that meets your needs today and is ready for your future needs”. That description covers some of the most important innovations of the 12c database.
The management of multiple databases thus takes aim at the new multi-tenant option, which allows pluggable databases (PDB) to be quickly plugged into and out of a container database (CDB). This permits processes, RAM and large parts of the data dictionary, which are stored in the CDB, to be shared. The existing systems can as a result be used more efficiently. In addition, this concept allows databases to be rapidly deployed via the cloud.
The in-memory option has attracted the most attention in recent months. Through it, the customer can download highly detailed tables, individual columns, materialised views, or indexes into the working memory. This concept accommodates the practice in data warehouses, where often only a small part of the data must be immediately available.
Another important innovation is the combination of heat map and automatic data optimisation (ADO). The heat map shows which lines and segments are most frequently accessed. Based on these data, via ADO the customer can define policies for compressing infrequently used data and to shift that data to slower but low-cost storage. Frequently requested data, on the other hand, end up on faster but more expensive hard drives. This strategy reduces overall storage costs and increases the effectiveness of data storage. (Source: Oracle/rf)