Oracle Database 23c Released for DBaaS; Licensing Overview
Update
May 2024; 23c was subsequently renamed to 23ai — see this blog for more
In Brief
Database 23c has now been released for BaseDB (Oracle’s DBaaS (OCI) offerings, previously known as DBCS). The license manual has (temporarily) been ‘stripped back’ to include only these offerings but gives clues as to what will happen when updated for all editions including on-premises. You should also refresh your 23c Free database image if you are already using it as Oracle have provided an updated version. Database 23c will be available for on-premises in the first half of 2024 (for Linux, at least).
There are a few new nice features in 23c (see here), most of which appear to have no extra cost option (i.e. they are included in your database license). There are no apparent major changes to licensing or extra cost options. Of particular interest:
· SQL Firewall (overview); confused wording between ‘included in Oracle Database’ — which usually means it’s not an extra cost option and reference to it being part of Database Vault (which would then exclude use on DBSE2).
· True Cache (overview); no mention in the licensing manual but technically uses ‘Active Data Guard’ technology — so may end up being a part of that option.
If you pay Oracle support and maintenance, you can upgrade your database to 23c (or any other available version) as soon as it is released — there is no additional upgrade fee or license restriction.
Oracle’s ‘Options/Management Packs Usage Reporting’ script (provided on My Oracle Support) has not been updated for 23c yet — however, you should not be using this script for license compliance assessment.
Finally, a section of the manual covering Oracle Secure Backup Cloud Module which applies encryption and compression to backups has been removed entirely, which is hopefully just an omission. Contact me if you want to discuss the potential impact if you are using features related to this module.
Oracle Database 23c (for DBaaS) released
Oracle’s database license manual for 23c (the long-awaited latest Long-Term Support (LTS) version) has just been released.
In keeping with previous releases, 23c will be available in Oracle’s cloud (OCI) BaseDB first and so the update currently shows only information pertaining to such Oracle DBaaS offerings, however, this does set out the likely impact for on-premises deployments.
The on-premises and other Oracle Cloud deployments release schedule can be found here. Linux on-premises is scheduled for H1 2024.
The revised timeline for Oracle Database now looks as follows:
New Features
23c offers a number of new and improved features which are largely developer-focussed (hence the ‘App Simple’ tagline; here — however some of these are quite radical; administrators and developers using Oracle databases will wonder how we’ve worked without these before: e.g. schema-level privileges (more information here), DB_DEVELOPER_ROLE (here) and SQL Firewall (here).
Licensing Changes
Whenever a new release comes out, it’s always worth having a look at the newly released license manual; which is exactly what I’ve done here.
Firstly, we’ll start with a recap: are you ‘allowed’ to upgrade your databases? The good news is that a change in database version will not require you to change your license. As long as you have support in place or are using a License Included Oracle Cloud offering, you have the right to use 23c. Your metric, your license and rights etc. will remain as was. Remember that database edition is different to version so you should only install and use features that match your database edition.
When comparing the 23c license manual to the latest 21c manual, the following ‘major’ license changes are noted:
· Across the board, Database Free rights have been updated (when compared to XE)
· Oracle have clarified the naming from, say, ‘DBCS EE-HP’ to ‘BaseDB EE-HP’ — to highlight the difference between the ‘base’ database and Exadata offerings
· This version of the manual only covers BaseDB editions and Oracle Database Free (i.e. excludes Engineered Systems, Standard Edition, other On-Premises editions and Exadata Cloud variants.
· The number of permitted Pluggable databases (PDBs; part of the multitenant architecture) in Database Free is now 16 rather than the 252 previously allowed, though this is unlikely to ever have been a limit that would be reached due to other Database Free / XE limitations
· In-Memory Column Store support for External Tables is now included in all editions (previously was not part of BaseDB EE or EE High-Performance)
· SQL Firewall — oddly shown as part of Database Free but not BaseDB EE — and cited in the documentation as ‘included in Oracle Database’ which usually means it is not an extra cost option. Suspect this will ultimately be part of Database Vault and not zero cost.
· Automatic SQL Plan Management (overview) appears as part of all BaseDB offerings, which is a change from previous versions (was only included in Engineered Systems and Exadata Cloud Services/Cloud@Customer)
· Introduction of Automatic Transaction Rollback, a new feature in 23c -see here (apparently included in all editions but not Database Free)
· Automatic Error Mitigation — there is very little documentation available at this time, see parameter overview here
· Sharding is now called Oracle Globally Distributed Database, with the same limitations as previously (3 primary shards for EE, EE-HP)
· Data Masking, Diagnostics and Tuning packs are shown as part of Database Free (XE showed all packs as not available)
· True Cache (here) looks like an interesting offering but there is no reference to it as a feature in the new manual.
Conclusion
Oracle 23c should be a target release for most organisations where applications/in-house developers support it and when available for your platform/deployment. There are some interesting features as well as remaining on a current release. It appears that the main new features are included in the core database — we will provide an update when the on-premises versions are released.
As my previous article mentioned, you have various support options available for your older releases; it is worth grabbing a coffee and reading my article, here.
There are always license considerations to be understood with any release; remember that many database options are easily invoked and cannot be uninstalled, therefore, care and education of your administrators and users is vital, as well as a regular refresh of your position.
Do not rely on SAM tools (even those which are verified without understanding their limitations) and do not rely on Oracle’s license script posted on My Oracle Support: it is radically different from Oracle’s audit script and contains both false negatives and false positives.
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Contact us with any questions or go to our website for more information.
About the author
Paul Bullen is a Principle License Consultant at Version 1.
