Oracle Database 12c is available for download from Oracle Technology Network (OTN). First announced by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison during his keynote at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, Oracle Database 12c introduces a new multi-tenant architecture that simplifies the process of consolidating databases onto the cloud; enabling customers to manage many databases as one – without changing their applications.
During the OpenWorld keynote, Ellison described Oracle Database 12c as “the first multi-tenant database in the world” and said it provides “a fundamentally new architecture” to “introduce the notion of a container database” with the ability to plug in multiple separate, private databases into that single container.
The database management system is responsible for keeping the separate databases separate and secure - not an application, he emphasized. Managing many as one provides operational, hardware and scalability efficiencies, and more importantly with multi-tenancy at the database level it provides security to go along with efficiency, he said. Oracle 12c is the foundation for an expanding cloud business at Oracle Corp., Ellison explained. “It is the software foundation of the Oracle Cloud, multi-tenancy built at the right level.”
Oracle Database 12c is aimed at addressing the key challenges of customers who are consolidating databases in a private cloud model by enabling greatly improved efficiency and lower management costs, while retaining the autonomy of separate databases.
According to Oracle, Oracle Database 12c includes more security innovations than any other previous Oracle database release, which will help customers address evolving threats and stringent data privacy regulations. New redaction capabilities allow organizations to protect sensitive data such as credit card numbers displayed in applications - without changes to most applications. Oracle Database 12c also includes new Run-Time Privilege Analysis, enabling organizations to identify privileges and roles actually being used, helping revoke unnecessary privileges and enforce least privilege with confidence that business operations will not be disrupted.
As a result, Oracle Database 12c can benefit customers deploying private database clouds as well as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors looking for the power of Oracle Database in a secure multitenant model.
Oracle Database 12c, optimized on SPARC and Intel Xeon processors, introduces 500 additional features and is the result of 2,500 person-years of development and 1.2 million hours of testing, plus an extensive beta program with Oracle’s customers and partners. Oracle Database 12c is also co-engineered with Oracle’s SPARC T5 servers.
More information is available about Oracle Database 12c.