Oracle Database

Oracle AI Database (commonly referred to as Oracle Database, Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a proprietary multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation.

It is a database commonly used for running online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing (DW) and mixed (OLTP & DW) database workloads. Oracle AI Database is available by several service providers on-premises, on-cloud, or as a hybrid cloud installation. It may be run on third party servers as well as on Oracle hardware (Exadata on-premises, on Oracle Cloud or at Cloud at Customer).

Oracle AI Database uses SQL for database updating and retrieval.

Oracle Database runs on-premises, on Oracle engineered systems such as Oracle Exadata, on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and as a managed Autonomous Database service. It is also offered inside Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services data centers through Oracle's multicloud offerings. The current long-term support release, Oracle AI Database 26ai, became available in the cloud and on Oracle engineered systems in October 2025 and on-premises for Linux x86-64 in January 2026.

History

Larry Ellison and his two friends and former co-workers, Bob Miner and Ed Oates, started a consultancy called Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977, later Oracle Corporation. SDL developed the original version of the Oracle software. The name Oracle comes from the code-name of a Central Intelligence Agency-funded project Ellison had worked on while formerly employed by Ampex; the CIA was Oracle's first customer, and allowed the company to use the code name for the new product.

Ellison wanted his database to be compatible with IBM System R, but that company's Don Chamberlin declined to release its error codes. By 1985 Oracle advertised, however, that "Programs written for SQL/DS or DB2 will run unmodified" on the many non-IBM mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers its database supported "Because all versions of ORACLE are identical".

Later releases introduced capabilities associated with successive eras of the product, including PL/SQL stored procedures and triggers in Oracle7 (1992), Real Application Clusters in Oracle9i (2001), grid infrastructure and automatic management in Oracle 10g (2003), the multitenant architecture and In-Memory Column Store in Oracle Database 12c (2013), and AI Vector Search and JSON Relational Duality in Oracle Database 23ai (2024). In October 2025 Oracle rebranded the 23ai line as Oracle AI Database 26ai. (see Release History)

Architecture

An Oracle Database system consists of an instance and a database. The instance is a set of memory structures and background processes; the database is the set of files that store data. The instance exists only in memory, and a single instance is associated with one multitenant container database.

The principal memory structures are the System Global Area, which is shared, and the Program Global Areas, which are private to individual processes.

High Availability and Scalability

Oracle Database includes several technologies for high availability, disaster recovery, and scale.

Oracle Real Application Clusters allows multiple instances on separate servers to access one shared database concurrently; it was introduced with Oracle9i in 2001. Oracle Data Guard maintains standby databases synchronized with a primary database, and Active Data Guard additionally allows read-only workloads on a standby while it applies changes. Oracle GoldenGate performs logical replication and data integration across heterogeneous systems. Native sharding, introduced in Oracle Database 12c Release 2, distributes one logical database across independent shards. Oracle Exadata is an engineered system that pairs database servers with storage servers and offloads operations such as filtering to the storage tier; it is available on-premises, in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and through Cloud@Customer.

Notable Features

AI Vector Search adds a vector data type, vector indexes, and vector distance operators to the database. These allow similarity search over machine-learning embeddings to be expressed in SQL and combined with queries over relational, JSON, spatial, and graph data. It became generally available in Oracle Database 23ai. It became generally available in Oracle Database 23ai.

In-Memory Column Store maintains a column-oriented copy of selected tables in memory in addition to the row-oriented format, and the optimizer can use the columnar copy for analytic queries. It was introduced in Oracle Database 12c Release 1.Partitioning divides large tables and indexes into independently managed pieces. Advanced Compression and Hybrid Columnar Compression are compression features for transactional and warehouse data respectively.

Data Types

Oracle AI Database supports a variety of data types and data models within a single system. These include traditional relational data types as well as semi-structured, unstructured, and specialized data formats, enabling different types of data to be stored and queried together.

Releases and versions

Oracle products follow a custom release-numbering and -naming convention. The "ai" in the current release, Oracle AI Database 26ai, stands for "Artificial Intelligence". Previous releases (e.g. Oracle Database 19c, 10g, and Oracle9i Database) have used suffixes of "c", "g", and "i" which stand for "Cloud", "Grid", and "Internet" respectively. Prior to the release of Oracle8i Database, no suffixes featured in Oracle AI Database naming conventions. There was no v1 of Oracle AI Database, as Ellison "knew no one would want to buy version 1". For some database releases, Oracle also provides an Express Edition (XE) that is free to use.

Oracle AI Database release numbering has used the following codes:

{| class="wikitable"

| colspan="5" | LTR = Long-Term Release, IR = Innovation Release

! Oracle Database Version

! Initial Release Version

! Initial Release Date

! Terminal Version

! Marquee Features

| 23.26.0

| Starting with Release Update 23.26.0, released in October 2025, Oracle Database 23ai is replaced by Oracle AI Database 26ai.

Applying Release Update 23.26.0 to an existing Oracle Database 23ai deployment converts it to Oracle AI Database 26ai without requiring a separate database upgrade or application re-certification

|AI is natively architected into Oracle AI Database and SQL; unifies all major data models and workloads in a single converged engine; Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server support; Oracle Unified Memory Core for agent context across multiple data types; AI Semantic Models; unified relational, JSON, and graph data model; Private Agent Factory and Select AI Agent; Oracle Vectors on Ice for Apache Iceberg tables; Autonomous AI Lakehouse; Deep Data Security; Private AI Services Container

| 23.4.0

| From Release Update 23.26.0 onward, 23ai is replaced by Oracle AI Database 26ai

On May 2, 2024, Oracle Database 23ai was released on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as cloud services, including OCI Exadata Database Service, OCI Exadata Database Cloud@Customer, and OCI Base Database Service. It is also available in Always Free Autonomous Database. Oracle Database 23c (previously released in 2023) was renamed to Oracle Database 23ai (23.4) due to the significant additional engineering effort to add features that bring AI capabilities to the data in Oracle AI Database.

Oracle Database 23c (23.2 and 23.3) was released in 2023:

April 2023 (Linux) Oracle Database Free - Developer Release

September 2023 Oracle AI Database on Base Database Service

| AI Vector Search (includes new Vector data type, Vector indexes, and Vector SQL operators/functions), JSON Relational Duality, JSON Schema Validation, Transactional Microservices Support, OKafka, Operational Property Graphs, Support for SQL/PGQ, Schema Privileges, Developer Role, In-database SQL Firewall, TLS 1.3 Support, Integration with Azure Active Directory OAuth2, True Cache for mid-tier caching, Readable Per-PDB Standby, Globally Distributed Database with active-active RAFT-based replication, Real-time SQL Plan Management, Priority Transactions, SQL Syntax Simplification, Schema Annotations, Data Use Case Domains, Column Value Lock-free Reservations

| 21.1.0

| December 2020 (cloud)

August 2021 (Linux)

| Blockchain Tables, Multilingual Engine - JavaScript Execution in the Database, Binary JSON Data Type, Per-PDB Data Guard Physical Standby (aka Multitenant Data Guard), Per-PDB GoldenGate Change Capture, Self-Managing In-Memory, In-Memory Hybrid Columnar Scan, In-Memory Vector Joins with SIMD, Sharding Advisor Tool, Property Graph Visualization Studio, Automatic Materialized Views, Automatic Zone Maps, SQL Macros, Gradual Password Rollover

| 19.1.0 // 12.2.0.3

| February 2019 (Exadata)

April 2019 (Linux)

June 2019 (cloud)

| Active Data Guard DML Redirection, Automatic Index Creation, Real-Time Statistics Maintenance, SQL Queries on Object Stores, In-Memory for IoT Data Streams, Hybrid Partitioned Tables, Automatic SQL Plan Management, SQL Quarantine, Zero-Downtime Grid Infrastructure Patching, Finer-Granularity Supplemental Logging, Automated PDB Relocation

| 18.1.0 // 12.2.0.2

| February 2018 (cloud, Exadata)

July 2018 (other)

| 18.17.0 January 2022

| Polymorphic Table Functions, Active Directory Integration, Transparent Application Continuity, Approximate Top-N Query Processing, PDB Snapshot Carousel, Online Merging of Partitions and Subpartitions

| 12.2.0.1 March 2017

| August 2016 (cloud)

March 2017 (on-premises)

| 12.2.0.1 March 2017

| Native Sharding, Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance, Exadata Cloud Service, Cloud at Customer

| 12.1.0.1

| July 2013

| 12.1.0.2 July 2014

| Multitenant architecture, In-Memory Column Store, Native JSON, SQL Pattern Matching, Database Cloud Service

| 11.2.0.1

| September 2009

| 11.2.0.4 August 2013

| Edition-Based Redefinition, Data Redaction, Hybrid Columnar Compression, Cluster File System, Golden Gate Replication, Database Appliance

| 11.1.0.6

| September 2007

| 11.1.0.7 September 2008

| Active Data Guard, Secure Files, Exadata

| 10.2.0.1

| July 2005

| 10.2.0.5 April 2010

| Real Application Testing, Database Vault, Online Indexing, Advanced Compression, Data Guard Fast-Start Failover, Transparent Data Encryption

| 10.1.0.2

| 2003

| 10.1.0.5 February 2006

| Automated Database Management, Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor, Grid infrastructure, Oracle ASM, Flashback Database

| 9.2.0.1

| 2002

| 9.2.0.8 April 2007

| Advanced Queuing, Data Mining, Streams, Logical Standby

| 9.0.1.0

| 2001

| 9.0.1.5 December 2003

| Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle XML DB

| 8.1.5.0

| 1998

| 8.1.7.4 August 2000

| Native internet protocols and Java, Virtual Private Database

| 8.0.3

| June 1997

| 8.0.6

| Recovery Manager, Partitioning. First version available for Linux.

| 7.3.0

| February 1996

| 7.3.4

| Object-relational database

| 7.2.0

| May 1995

| Shared Server, XA Transactions, Transparent Application Failover

| 7.1.0

| May 1994

| Parallel SQL Execution. First version available for Windows NT.

| 7.0.12

| June 1992

| Distributed 2-phase commit, PL/SQL stored procedures, triggers, shared cursors, cost-based optimizer

| 6.2.0

| Oracle Parallel Server

| 6.0.17

| 1988

| 6.0.37

| Row-level locking, SMP scalability / performance, storing of undo in database, online backup and recovery, B*Tree indexes, PL/SQL executed from compiled programs (C etc.). First version available for Novell Netware 386.

| 5.0.22 (5.1.17)

| 1985

| 5.1.22

| C2 security certification. Support for distributed database systems and client/server computing. First version available for OS/2. Correlated sub-queries. DOS version supports extended memory.

| 4.1.4.0

| 1984

| 4.1.4.4

| Multiversion read consistency. Halloween Problem solved. Improved concurrency. First version available for MS-DOS and IBM mainframe.

| 3.1.3

| 1983

| Concurrency control, data distribution, and scalability. Re-written in C for portability to other operating systems, including UNIX.

| 2.3

| 1979

| First commercially available SQL RDBMS. Basic SQL queries, simple joins and <code>CONNECT BY</code> joins. Atomic role-level SQL statements. Rudimentary concurrency control and database integrity. No query optimizer. Written in assembly language for the PDP-11 to run in 128KB of RAM. Ran on PDP-11 and VAX/VMS in PDP-11 compatibility mode.

| colspan="5" | LTR = Long-Term Release, IR = Innovation Release

The Introduction to Oracle AI Database includes a brief history on some of the key innovations introduced with each major release of Oracle AI Database.

See My Oracle Support (MOS) note Release Schedule of Current Database Releases (Doc ID 742060.1) for the current Oracle AI Database releases and their patching end dates.

Patch updates and security alerts

Prior to Oracle Database 18c, Oracle Corporation released Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) and Security Patch Updates (SPUs) and Security Alerts to close security vulnerabilities. These releases are issued quarterly; some of these releases have updates issued prior to the next quarterly release.

Starting with Oracle Database 18c, Oracle Corporation releases Release Updates (RUs) and Release Update Revisions (RURs). RUs usually contain security, regression (bug), optimizer, and functional fixes which may include feature extensions as well. RURs include all fixes from their corresponding RU but only add new security and regression fixes. However, no new optimizer or functional fixes are included.

Competition

In the market for relational databases, Oracle AI Database competes against commercial products such as IBM Db2 and Microsoft SQL Server. Oracle and IBM tend to battle for the mid-range database market on Unix and Linux platforms, while Microsoft dominates the mid-range database market on Microsoft Windows platforms. However, since they share many of the same customers, Oracle and IBM tend to support each other's products in many middleware and application categories (for example: WebSphere, PeopleSoft, and Siebel Systems CRM), and IBM's hardware divisions work closely with Oracle on performance-optimizing server-technologies (for example, Linux on IBM Z). Niche commercial competitors include Teradata (in data warehousing and business intelligence), Software AG's ADABAS, Sybase, and IBM's Informix, among many others.

In the cloud, Oracle AI Database competes against the database services of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Increasingly, the Oracle AI Database products compete against open-source software relational and non-relational database systems such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Couchbase, Neo4j, ArangoDB and others. Oracle acquired Innobase, supplier of the InnoDB codebase to MySQL, in part to compete better against open source alternatives, and acquired Sun Microsystems, owner of MySQL, in 2010. Database products licensed as open-source are, by the legal terms of the Open Source Definition, free to distribute and free of royalty or other licensing fees.

Reception

The Rosen Electronics Letter in February 1983 stated that Oracle was "the most comprehensive offering we've seen" among databases, with good marketing and substantial installed base encouraging developers to write software for it. The newsletter especially approved of the user interface, noting the "simplicity of setting up 'programs'—queries, data manipulation, updates—without actually programming".

References

External links

Overview provided by Oracle Corporation.