OOW Day 3: Playing with Oracle 12c – new features pluggable & multitenant database

For the third day at the OOW, we had the opportunity to “play” with the beta 2 of the upcoming Oracle database release “Oracle Database 12c”. This was a Hands-on-Lab session with about 60 participants with at each seat place an Oracle VM guest running on Oracle Linux 5. The goal of this session was to demonstrate the new database feature pluggable database announced by Larry as a multitenant database.

Let’s start with some generalities about the technology. A single database container (CDB) can contain several pluggable databases (PDB).

• You can unplug a PDB from a CDB to another CDB
• PDB’s can be cloned inside the CDB
• Management of PDB (clone/creation/plug/unplug/drop) are implemented as SQLs
• All Oracle database options/features are available on the PDB level

Benefits of pluggable databases

• Extremely fast PDB-provisioning (clone inside the CDB)
• Database patch/upgrade management very quick as CDB is a single point of installation
• RMAN backup at CDB level
• Etc.

Some technical background

• Each PDB has its own data dictionary
• Data Guard configuration on CDB as whole
• RMAN point-in-time recovery at PDB level (while other PDB’s remains open)
• Flashback of a PDB should be available for Oracle 12c Release 2

In fact, we had a network outage during the session… We could only create a PDB inside an existing CDB clone online in that PDB. Then, unplug the PDB clone and plug it in another CDB (offline).

This Oracle Database 12c features looks really promising… can’t wait to play with it on productive systems 🙂

Enjoy Oracle “Multitenant” Database 12c!