There were many licensing changes on the Oracle Database product in 2019, especially with Oracle Database 19c. Here are a few major ones that every Oracle Database Customer must be aware of to plan for 2020 and beyond.
Oracle introduced the multitenant architecture in Oracle Database 12c. Oracle 12c (12.1 and 12.2) allowed one user PDB as part of the Enterprise Edition license (single-tenant). With the Multitenant license option, you can create up to 252 PDBs. In 12c, the Standard Edition did not have the multitenant option – only one PDB allowed. If you are not licensed for Oracle Multitenant, the container database architecture still can be in use (single-tenant mode) - with one user-created PDB, one user-created application root, and one user-created proxy PDB. No changes in 18c.
In Oracle Database 19c, Oracle allows you to create three user-created PDBs without any additional multitenant license. Applicable for both Standard Edition (SE2) and Enterprise Edition (EE). Multitenant architecture brings huge administration advantages, especially to minimize patching, upgrade and cloning. This license change will help accelerate the adoption of the Container Database architecture.
Though the multitenant architecture was introduced back in 2013 with Oracle Database 12c, the adoption rate is very minimal, mainly in my opinion, the cost involved. When you cannot create more than one PDB, why bother using the Container architecture. And, for EBS customers, the database support lagged way behind and was stuck with 12.1 databases until recently.
Though the non-CDB architecture was “deprecated” since 12.1, it was available and supported till date. Things are changing. In 20c, the non-CDB architecture is “desupported” and I believe there will not be an option to create non-CDB database.
Here is a reminder for the support end-dates of database versions.
| Release | Patching End Date | Premier Support (PS) Ends | Extended Support (ES) Ends |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19c Long term support release |
31-Mar-2023 without ES/ULA 31-Mar-2026 with ES/ULA |
31-Mar-2023 | 31-Mar-2026 |
| 18c Annual release |
08-June-2021 | 31-Mar-2023 | Not Available |
| 12.2.0.1 Annual release |
20-Nov-2020 | 31-Mar-2023 | Not Available |
| 12.1.0.2 Terminal Release for 12.1 Family |
31-Jul-2021 with paid ES, ULA, or EBS waiver | 31-Jul-2018 | 31-Jul-2022 |
| 12.1.0.1 for 12.1 Family |
Ended: 31-Aug-2016 | 31-Aug-2016 | Not Available |
| 11.2.0.4 Terminal Release for 11.2 Family |
31-Dec-2020 with paid ES, ULA, or EBS waiver | 31-Jan-2015 | 31-Dec-2020 |
| 11.2.0.3 Patchset Release for 11.2 Family |
Ended: 27-Aug-2015 | 27-Jan-2015 | 27-Aug-2015 |
Pay attention to the patching end date. 12.2.0.1 and 18c are “Annual Releases,” meaning you get no extended support. 19c is “Long term release,” and it will have premier support for four years, and paid extended support for an additional three years. Though not officially documented, Oracle product managers shared at OOW19, that 20c and 21c will be “Annual Release” and 22c may be the “Long term release”. This means 20c will have a shorter life than 19c. Get your budgets and projects ready to upgrade all Oracle databases (including that support Oracle E-Business Suite) to 19c multitenant architecture.
Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 (SE2) was released in 2015. The major difference between SE and SE2 was the number of sockets and CPU cores allowed. SE allowed the use of 4 sockets (2 sockets for SE1) without any limitation on the number of CPU threads. In SE2, the number of sockets was limited to 2. SE2 also limits the maximum number of CPU threads per database instance to 16. You have to migrate SE licenses to SE2 license to upgrade a 12.1.0.1 or 11.2.x SE database to 12.1.0.2 or higher.
Oracle Real Application Clusters is part of the SE and SE2. Even with the limitation of 2 sockets in SE2, if you can find two single-socket machines, you are allowed to create a two-node RAC instance with SE2 license. Well, it changed in 19c. Oracle RAC is no longer available with Standard Edition anymore.
If you are using Orale RAC with SE2 today, maybe it is time to evaluate alternatives. The primary alternatives are Oracle RAC (additional cost EE option) on top of Oracle Enterprise Edition (licensed by core, not by socket) or Cloud migration. The first thing you need is take our Cloud Maturity Assessment, talk to our experts about your business requirements and find the appropriate solution.
Oracle Analytics and Oracle Spatial and Graph used to be extra-cost options in the Oracle database.
Oracle Advanced Analytics empowers data and business analysts to extract knowledge, discover new insights and make predictions—working directly with large data volumes in the Oracle Database. Oracle Advanced Analytics provides a combination of powerful in-database algorithms and open-source R algorithms. Analytic capabilities are accessible via SQL and R languages and through the SQL Developer extension or open-source R clients.
Graphs let you model data based on relationships in a more natural, intuitive way. They let you explore and discover connections and patterns in social networks, IoT, big data, data warehouses and complex transaction data for applications such as fraud detection in banking, customer 360, and smart manufacturing. All graph features are now included as part of the Oracle database without any additional cost.
The spatial analysis enables a better understanding of complex interactions based on geographic relationships. All editions of Oracle Database now includes comprehensive spatial analytics and data models.
As of December 5, 2019, the Machine Learning (formerly known as Advanced Analytics), Spatial and Graph features of Oracle Database may be used for development and deployment purposes with all on-prem editions and Oracle Cloud Database Services (version 11.2 and above). Oracle Machine Learning is supported on SE2 as well.
E-Business Suite (EBS) now supports Oracle container architecture (finally!). An upgrade to Oracle Database 19c should be in the plans not only to take advantage of the multitenant architecture but to be on a supported database platform.
As you can see in the table, with the EBS waiver Oracle EBS customers can enjoy the benefits of Oracle Extended support on database versions 11.2.0.4 and 12.1.0.2. The extended support for 11.2.0.4 is ending in a year (Dec 2020), and 12.1.0.2 is ending in July 2021. EBS customers have less than 18 months to plan and upgrade all their databases to 19c with Container Database architecture. EBS versions 12.1.3 and 12.2 support the 19c database.
As part of the upgrade to Database 19c, you will convert the EBS database to the CDB architecture with a single pluggable database (PDB). A CDB with one PDB (single-tenant) is currently the only certified deployment for Oracle E-Business Suite with Database 19c. We are not aware of a non-CDB architecture to be certified or supported for EBS with Database 19c.
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