Oracle database 12C introduction

During the 2012 version of the annual Oracle OpenWorld meeting in San Francisco Oracle announced a new version of the there database. The new version will be Oracle Database 12C where C stands for cloud, it will not come as a surprise that Oracle is launching a cloud version of the Database. For everyone following the releases of Oracle software it is already for some time evident that they are building a full cloud stack of their products.

The impressing part of Oracle Database 12c is that it is based upon a complete new and fundamentally changed way of thinking about databases. Oracle Database 12C will be the first multitenant database in the market. The new concept of the 12C database is around a shared database container which will hold and orchestrate the background processes that are needed to operate the database. Within the 12C container database you can deploy multiple pluggable databases. The current limit for the number of pluggable databases deployed within a single container database will be 252 in version 12.1 however according to Penny Avril who is the senior director for oracle database product management this number will increase in upcoming releases.

The below image shows the high level architecture for the container database principle introduced in the Oracle 12C database.

Current release date is set for somewhere in 2013 and the 12.1 release is still in beta testing by a select number of clients partners so nothing can be stated yet about the exact details and the pricing and licensing of the 12C database however it is intended to have a cost saving effect for customers, cost saving will come from making the management of databases more easy and less resource intensive as well as the ability to consolidate multiple databases in one database container as pluggable databases.