With Oracle now releasing a new version of Oracle Database every year, it's time

for database administrators like me to delve into the new features that the company
is providing in the 2019 update -- Oracle Database 19c.

As has been the case with the last few versions of the database software, including
Oracle Database 18c last year, Oracle 19c is being released in stages. Oracle first
made the new release available in January 2019 on Live SQL, its free SQL
development and tutorials platform; in mid-February, 19c also became available in
on-premises versions of the Oracle Exadata engineered system.

Oracle has said it plans to add Oracle 19c to its other engineered systems and its
cloud database services before the end of March. Customers that run Oracle
databases on conventional on-premises systems will have to wait a little longer for
19c -- it's due for release on a variety of server platforms during the second
quarter of the calendar year.

Database administrators (DBAs) who want to try out Oracle 19c and don't have an
Exadata system installed can work with the new database on the Live SQL site. As
you can see in the screenshot below, Live SQL now runs the production version of
Oracle Database 19c Enterprise Edition. To use the cloud-based platform, you'll
need an Oracle single sign-on account; registering for one is free if you don't
already have an account.

Oracle Live SQL screenshot with Oracle Database 19c

Oracle's Live SQL site now runs on Oracle Database 19c.
While Oracle has said improved stability is its top development priority for Oracle
19c, the software does include some new features. Oracle officials gave us a nice
preview of them at Oracle OpenWorld 2018, and it has now posted the 19c
documentation online. Here's a list of some of my favorite new features in 19c,
based on what I've seen so far:

Schema-only accounts. If you create a user account in Oracle 19c without specifying
a password, it won't include the ability to log in to the database. This is a great
way of creating an account to be the schema owner for database objects, while
protecting it from unauthorized access. In a 19c database, the ACCOUNT_STATUS
column of the DBA_USERS view will show a value of NONE for schema-only accounts.
Automatic indexing. This new feature puts Oracle's automation capabilities to work.
If Oracle 19c thinks a database table would benefit from an index, the system will
automatically create the index and initially mark it as invisible so it can't be
used. Oracle 19c will then run SQL statements from your application to see if the
index improves query execution. If the index does help, it will be made visible for
application use; if it doesn't do so, the index will become unusable and eventually
be removed. You can control this feature with DBMS_AUTO_INDEX, a new PL/SQL package
that's included in 19c.
Quarantining of runaway SQL statements. Using Oracle's Resource Manager tool is a
great way to make sure SQL statements don't become resource hogs and slow down
database performance for everyone. If a statement asks for more system resources
than the DBA allows, Resource Manager kills it. However, in existing versions of
Oracle Database, nothing stops users from executing problematic SQL statements
again. In Oracle 19c, Resource Manager can automatically quarantine the statements;
should a user try to issue one again, it won't run at all.
Automatic flashback of standby databases. In prior versions, if DBAs wanted to use
Oracle's flashback features to return a primary database to a previous state, they
needed to manually rebuild an associated standby database before it could resume
normal operations. In Oracle 19c, a DBA can put the standby database in MOUNT mode
with no managed recovery and then flash back the primary one; the standby will also
be reverted, thus keeping it in sync with the primary.
Built-in privilege analysis. A good DBA likes to give database users the least
amount of privileges needed for them to be able to perform their jobs. Oracle's
privilege analysis feature reports on privileges that users have been assigned but
haven't used; DBAs can use this information to create a stricter security policy
without taking away any privileges that users need. The feature was originally
released in 2014 as part of Oracle Database 12c, but it previously required the
extra-cost Oracle Database Vault software. The Enterprise Edition of Oracle 19c now
includes privilege analysis as a core feature.
Read/write Oracle Multitenant source databases. If you use the optional Oracle
Multitenant architecture technology, you can clone a pluggable database (PDB) to
create a duplicate one. Previously, if the clone was a snapshot copy that used
sparse files without much data in them, the source PDB needed to be set to read-
only and had to stay that way for the life of the clone. With Oracle 19c, the
source PDB can now support both reads and writes.
That just scratches the surface of the new features in Oracle Database 19c. It's a
new year, with a new version of Oracle's flagship product becoming available, which
means that there's, once again, much to learn for all of us who are Oracle DBAs.