Oracle Database 12c Upgrade & 12 Performance Benefits

Thinking about giving your Oracle database the 12c upgrade?

Upgrading your Oracle database platform is one of the most strategic IT projects an organisation will undertake.

Whilst this upgrade is a relatively straightforward process, it will typically be linked to an infrastructure platform migration, or can be tied to a major application upgrade.

We will discuss the main performance-related features in Oracle 12.2 (12c) that will directly benefit your organisation – enabling your systems to run faster or reducing the effort required to maintain and operate your critical Oracle database platforms.

Getting More Oracle 12c Database Upgrade Value

Oracle database 12c upgrade projects require significant investments in time and money to complete successfully. Realising the maximum benefits and value from the upgrade should be on every IT Managers agenda.

In this blog post, we will consider the features of an Oracle 12c (or 18c) upgrade and how these enhancements help your business to run faster. These features provide opportunities to significantly enhance the value of your Oracle data management platform.

We have listed out the Oracle 12c new features most relevant to those justifying an upgrade based on the following criteria:

• Requires minimal application changes/testing to implement.

• Included with the core database product and does not require additional licensing options (we make one or two exceptions where the feature is).

• Can provide significant performance benefits to real-world database performance problems.
• Provides the capability to use the database platform in ways that were not possible prior to the upgrade.

The table below shows the top 12 features (and included 6 more for those considering an Oracle 18c upgrade) that are well worth looking at and what would provide significant benefit with minimal implementation costs:

12c Upgrade Most Valuable New Performance Related Features

Feature	What does it do?	Who benefits?	Value Proposition	Version Available
Approximate Query Processing	Adopts a “near enough is good enough” approach to query results. To do this the database uses more efficient processing algorithms when providing query results.	BI and Analytics queries. Opportunity to significantly reduce the IO and CPU requirements for large analytic workloads and provide a far greater user experience. Adopts a “near enough is good enough” approach to query results. To do this the database uses more efficient processing algorithms when providing query results.	Better Performance	12.2
Index Usage Tracking	Enables a DBA to determine if indexes are actually being used by the database.	Everyone. Removing unnecessary indexes helps speed up applications and can significantly reduce the amount of disk space required by the database. Enables a DBA to determine if indexes are actually being used by the database.	Better Performance   Reduced Cost	12.2
Optimiser Statistics Advisor	The database can report which object statistics need to be updated.	Everyone. Maintaining statistics can be a resource-intensive task which is typically performed with a blanket approach. Specific targeting of objects that need statistics reduces the associated cost of maintaining statistics. The database can report which object statistics need to be updated.	Better Performance   Reduced Cost	12.2
Subset Standby – PDB	Allows the creation of a “subset” copy of a database as a read-only standby.	Reporting workloads can be offloaded to a database that is on “right sized” infrastructure.	Reduced Cost	12.2
Online Table Move	Enables database tables to be moved within the database.	Everyone. Planned maintenance tasks requiring table reorganisation can be done with zero impact.	Reduced Cost   Better Performance Higher Availability	12.2
Analytic Views	Organise the presentation of data using a dimensional model.	Application developers, ad-hoc reporting users.	Better Performance   Reduced Cost	12.2
In-Memory Cursor Duration Temp Tables	Caches SQL query blocks that are commonly used in memory.	Everyone. Application performance can be enhanced due to the Oracle database not having to process query results that are commonly used.	Better Performance	12.2
Database NFS Server	Provide NFS file shares directly from the database.	The IT department	Reduced Cost   Higher Availability	12.2
Advanced Index Compression	Provides much higher compression for database indexes.	Everyone. Advanced index compression provides the option to significantly reduce the space used by database indexes.	Better Performance   Reduced Cost	12.2
Auto List Partitioning	List partitions are automatically created as required.	DBA.	Better Performance   Reduced Cost	12.2
Fine-Grained Cursor Invalidation	Problem SQL statements can be removed from database memory selectively.	DBA. Fine-Grained Cursor Invalidation allows for the removal of a single SQL statement from database memory. Prior to Oracle 12.2 DBA’s had to flush all database memory to remove a problem cursor.	Better Performance	12.2
Pluggable Database IO Rate Limit	IO rates can be limited at the Pluggable Database level.	DBA. Allows for IO rates to be specified across PDB’s.	Better Performance   Reduced Cost	12.2
PDB Relocation	Move Pluggable Databases between Container Databases with near zero downtime.	Everyone. Allows for database services to be migrated between a pool of hosts.	Reduced Cost   Higher Availability	12.2
Upgrade Read Only User Tablespaces	Transaction data not changed during database upgrades.	Everyone.	Higher Availability	12.2
DBMS Scheduler Resource Queues	Simple resource management for DBMS Scheduler.	DBA. Allows for simple resource management for scheduler jobs without the complexity of Database Resource Manager.	Better Performance	12.2
TDE Live Encryption	Encrypt database files online with zero downtime.	Everyone. Database encryption prior to 12.2 would require downtime during the encryption process. This could be substantial for larger environments that place a considerable load on the system.	Higher Availability   Reduced Cost	12.2
Cancel SQL	Stop a single SQL statement from running.	Everyone. Prior to Oracle 12.2 stopping runaway SQL would require the user session to be killed.	Better Performance	18c
Rapid Home Provisioning	Automated patching and provisioning of Oracle database software.	Everyone. Maintaining software currency for an Oracle system can take a good chunk of DBA resource time.	Reduced Cost   Higher Availability	12.2

We consider the above features on their own provide considerable benefits to help organisations achieve optimal performance from their Oracle database platforms.

There are a large number of new features in Oracle 12c that can provide considerable performance benefits – either through reducing application response time or delivering significantly more value from your Oracle investment.

If you have any specific questions regarding the Oracle 12c/18c upgrade, please leave a comment or send me an email and I’d be happy to add more content to this blog post.