Hey Everyone,

Today’s post is to discuss few of the new features (Small but nice) of the all new Oracle 18c (Not In depth) that i have tested.

0. Oracle Database 18c is the first version of the product to follow a yearly release pattern. Yup, that’s correct!

1. Read Only Oracle Home (ROOH)
Yes, finally we have the RO Oracle Homes.

2. Columnar Format Exadata Flash Cache Enhancements
With Oracle Database 18c we now support accessing non-HCC objects in the Exadata Flash cache in full Database In-Memory columnar format. In 12.2 this was restricted to just HCC objects.

3. Scalable Sequences
A scalable sequence is particularly efficient when used to generate unordered primary or unique keys for data ingestion workloads having high level of concurrency. Scalable sequences significantly reduce the sequence and index block contention.

4. Converting Normal or High Redundancy Disk Groups to Flex Disk Groups without Restricted Mount
You can convert a conventional disk group (disk group created before Oracle Database18c) to an Oracle ASM flex disk group without using the restrictive mount (MOUNTED RESTRICTED) option.

5. ALTER SYSTEM CANCEL SQL
Another way to kill/cancel a SQL in a session.
The syntax would be like …

ALTER SYSTEM CANCEL SQL ‘SID, SERIAL[, @INST_ID][, SQL_ID]’;
e.g. ALTER SYSTEM CANCEL SQL ‘448, 98175, @1, 761hchah78addfj’;

6. The default value of PARALLEL_THREADS_PER_CPU is finally set 1 as default!
PARALLEL_THREADS_PER_CPU describes the number of parallel execution processes or threads that a CPU can handle during parallel execution. Good Move! 🙂

7. For users of Exadata and Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle Database 18c brings changes that will enable a significant reduction in the amount of undo that needs to be transferred across the interconnect. It achieves this by using RDMA, over the Infiniband connection, to access the undo blocks in the remote instance. This feature combined with a local commit cache significantly improves the throughput of some OLTP workloads when running on top of RAC.

8. 18c Authenticate and authorize Oracle users directly with Microsoft Active Directory

9. New Oracle Spatial features in Oracle Database 18c include distributed transactions, sharding, easier to use web services admin console.

Hope It Helps
Prashant Dixit