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Autonomous Database

Oracle introduced a disruptive technology and revolutionized how data is managed with the introduction of the Autonomous Database (ADB). ADB supports four different workload types, and each one provides performance improvements with additional features:

• Autonomous Transaction Processing: optimized to meet the customer's requirements for Online Transaction Processing
• Autonomous Data Warehouse: designed to support all standard SQL and business intelligence (BI) tools, optimized for data warehouse workloads
• Autonomous JSON Database: provides all the features of Autonomous Transaction Processing but is designed for developing NoSQL-style applications that use JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) documents
• Oracle APEX Application Development: APEX Service is a low-cost Oracle Cloud service offering convenient access to the Oracle APEX platform for rapidly building and deploying low-code applications

The ADB technology heavily leverages machine learning and automation to attack complexity and eliminate human error & manual intervention, to provide higher reliability, scalability, manageability, security, and operational efficiencies.

ADB handles creating the database, backing up the database, patching and upgrading the database, growing or shrinking the database, and provides excellent out-of-the-box performance and other routine database maintenance tasks without human intervention and with no service downtime.

Some of the main reasons to move to the Autonomous Database in Oracle Cloud include:

• Self-driving -You set up the size, speed, and service levels of the database; Oracle manages the rest. Automates all database and infrastructure management and monitoring.
• Self-securing -Imagine a database that is patched before you even know that you need a patch (let alone apply it). Oracle ADB provides protection from both external attacks and malicious internal users.
• Self-repairing: Automated protection from all downtime, it backs itself up. Oracle eliminates human errors with automation.
• Self-tuning: It looks at indexes and ensures the proper execution plan is used while creating or dropping indexes as needed using machine learning.
• Self-patching and upgrading: Security patches are automatically applied.

Innovative Autonomous Features

Oracle has a very long history as the leader in data management and is now a pioneer in automation and machine learning. Within the last 30-plus years, Oracle has been automating the core capabilities of the database technology from memory to storage management. Autonomous Database includes the following innovative features and capabilities:

1. Auto Provisioning: Deploys mission-critical databases, including RAC, on Exadata Infrastructure with fault-tolerant, highly available, seamless scale-out, protection from server failure, and maintenance with rolling fashion management.
2. Auto Configuration: Configures databases to optimize specific workloads with everything from memory to data formats and storage structure to ensure performance. Just load the data and start using the database.
3. Auto Indexing: Monitors database workloads and adds indexes to accelerate applications, including validation for effectiveness with machine learning for correction and adjustment.
4. Auto Scaling: Allows your database to use more CPU and IO resources or additional storage automatically when the workload or storage demand requires additional resources without downtime.
5. Auto Data Protection: Protects sensitive data with user-defined data classification and secures data for unusual database activities.
6. Auto Security: Encrypts data for the entire database, backup, and during data transport across the network with additional protection from phishing attacks, such as admin, internal, and OS privileges.
7. Auto Backup and Recovery: Backs up databases based on daily schedules and on-demand, including recovery capability with point-in-time within the last 60 days.
8. Auto Patching: Patches or upgrades with zero downtime for application.
9. Auto Resolution and Detection: Detects failures across hardware and software with machine learning, such as fault and error pattern recognition. Eliminates timeouts and deviation, such as redirecting unhealthy compute resources before a fault occurs.
10. Auto Optimization: Optimizes workloads with data formats, parallel processing, and database execution plans, including baselines.
11. Autonomous Data Guard and Automatic Failover: Data Guard can be used to protect critical databases from failures and disasters. Automatic Failover with zero-data loss to standby provides 99.995% SLA and is completely transparent to end-user applications.

Autonomous Databases are all auto-scale enabled by default, meaning they can scale up in compute resources as needed to optimize cost and provide performance on demand. All scaling operations occur while the applications continue to be available online to process business-critical workloads.

Where do you start?

You can try out the autonomous database for 30 days at: cloud.oracle.com/tryitororacle.com/cloud/free

It will take you to a screen that will allow you to register for a free trial. The free trial gives you access to many products, but you can continue using the autonomous database indefinitely (as long as you use it regularly).

Once you've set up your account, you can log in, and Oracle will take you to the Get Started Screen. Notice that if you want to continue with the free version, this also tells you which products are Always Free Eligible. You can also select these items from the "hamburger icon," the three lines in the upper left corner.

Creating an Autonomous Database

Let's create an Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW) Database. Click the hamburger menu in the upper left corner and select Oracle Database. Click create ADW box and notice the choices that come up for ADW (Autonomous Data Warehouse), ATP (Autonomous Transaction Processing), AJD (Autonomous JSON Database), and Apex (Application Development Database).

It will also ask for the number of CPUs, size in Terabytes, and username/password.

Next, the database is provisioning (being built). The process takes little time. In our example, this process took approximately 2.5 minutes. In the following figure, the database is now available.

As shown below, you can also easily scale up/down the CPUs or the database size on the fly.

With Autonomous DB, we can create a point-in-time copy of the database or a backup of the ADB.

We can create three types of clones:

1. Full Clone: completely new database with all data and metadata.
2. Refreshable Clone: a refreshable PDB with the ability to create a carousel for up to 7 days.
3. Metadata Clone: schema structure without any data.

Autonomous JSONDatabase and Application Development Database

You can also build an Autonomous JSON Database (AJD) and an Application Development Database, as shown in the following image, by selecting the Workload type on the Autonomous Database resource page.

The AJD fully supports the native binary JSON datatype, which is available in Oracle Database 21c. With AJD, customers can leverage relational database features, including transactions, indexing, declarative querying, and views. AJD supports the new native binary JSON file sizes of up to 32 MB, which is twice the size of the leading competitor.

Application Development Database is an Oracle Database pre-integrated and pre-configured with APEX for rapidly building and deploying modern data-driven applications in Oracle Cloud. Business users, citizens, and application developers can create enterprise apps 20X faster with 100X less code—without having to learn complex web technologies with just a browser.

Provisioning the AJD or Apex DB can take anywhere between 5-7 minutes.

Autonomous Database and Machine Learning

We believe that leveraging the Autonomous Database for Machine Learning is the best use of all. It makes using SQL & PL/SQL easy to leverage built-in algorithms that Oracle's massive AI, Machine Learning, and Data Science team have put together over the past decade. Below shows how to go from the Service Console to Development (includes: SQL, APEX, and Machine Learning).

The following screen shows how to get started, run SQL, or look at great examples.

As you see above, there are many examples of Machine Learning to choose from; but the number of algorithms and business applications are even more numerous.

By December 2021, 40 Regions will exist worldwide for customers to provision cloud services, and another 9+ are being added soon.

Oracle's investment in their R&D and Cloud makes them a formidable vendor, as you consider database and application workloads in the Cloud.

Summary

If you are considering migrating databases to the Cloud, you should consider Autonomous Databases as an option for simplicity and cost savings.

You can use the Database Migration Utility provided by Autonomous Database to easily migrate your data from MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and other databases. ADB supports connectivity via SQL*Net, JDBC, and ODBC. Are you using Microsoft Azure? No problem. Microsoft Azure and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) users can now connect to an Autonomous Database instance. Also, 12 of the available regions in OCI are interconnected with Azure, and you can directly connect ADB with your Azure Web Apps.

While migrating critical workloads to the Cloud, ATP/ADW/AJD/Apex (whether with bringing your own license (BYOL) or with all licenses included models) often is a cost-effective option while providing greater performance and flexibility.

While considering migrating to the Cloud, please consult the Oracle Autonomous Database Schema Advisor DOC ID: 2462677.1. The ADB Schema Advisor is a light-weight utility that analyzes the customer's database schemas for migration to the Autonomous Database. The Advisor analyzes the schema objects and identifies if differences exist when the object gets created on ADB by providing reports on:

• Counts of discovered objects and a summary of migration status
• Identify objects that cannot be migrated to the Autonomous Database potential issues like certain data types, database options, and SQL
• Identify objects that will migrate with modifications
• Provide some best practice recommendations and guidance
  

Happy Holidays!

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