Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 2
Oracle 12c New Features
In this chapter you can learn more about some the new features of Oracle 12c in general, but with special emphasis
to database consolidation, the main theme of this topic. Some new features will not be covered in this chapter but in
other chapters instead to give them the space they need. This is especially true for one of the most interesting new
features introduced in 12c: Pluggable Databases. Other interesting new features can be found Chapters 9 and 10
on disaster recovery, and in Chapter 11 on backup and recovery. Changes in the migration process can be found in
Chapter 12. To make it easier to use this chapter as a reference, new features are grouped into their respective scope:
Interesting changes for developers
Changes relevant to the database availability
Enhanced support for Information Life Cycle Management
Other infrastructure changes
The chapter will begin with the noteworthy changes for Oracle database developers.
Changes for Developers
As with every release there are interesting new features for developers. There are too many new features to cover in
this space so I will mention only the most interesting ones. Most of these new features should directly be related to
consolidating Oracle applications. Some features however were so interesting that they deserved to be mentioned.
If you want to see all of the new features in all their glory you need to refer to the official Oracle New Features Guide,
which lists them all briefly and refers to the relevant guides.
Security is rapidly becoming a key feature in the database and securing the environment is very often left to the
database administrator. Security however begins with the application, and the developers should be the first ones
to implement the provided interfaces in their code. Security is therefore listed here as a developer feature, not as an
administrator feature.
The Quest for Security and Least Privilege
Unfortunately security is an all-too-often neglected topic, not only in consolidation but elsewhere as well. Several
exploits of security vulnerabilities have reached the evening news, and it appears as if the bad guys are always a step
ahead. Knowing about the dangers of the Internet age is one thing, securing the database environment is another.
Using the least-privilege approach as opposed to granting a schema owner the DBA role is what should be done
moving forward. Many applications though started their life on Oracle 7 or 8 in what the author likes to call the age
of innocence. One could use FTP and the telnet protocol on a day-to-day basis and clear-text authentication was
the standard. And thus the application schema owner was granted the DBA role out of the same laziness instead of
granting only the required privileges. Changing such an application will be difficult but is well worth the time.
 
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