This post will be about the key features of Oracle Database 26ai. Actually, about the features introduced in 23ai and enhanced in 26ai. Again as the name suggest the vector search (the vector and embedding capabilities actually) will be revisited, JSON-Relational duality as well, but more than that, I will focus on the True cache.
In order to make this unique, and fun, I will start with physics and built my metaphorical bridge to 26ai, Embeddings & Vector Search, JSON Relational duality and True Cache. This post is for giving you a new perspective to assess the value that 26ai brings to the table for the data, and the database layer.
Okay. Let's start with neutrinos.(You weren't expecting this, you'll say "what's the connection?", but read on...)
I will suppose that you already know what a neutrino is and that's why I will skip giving background information part ( but I'll still give you basic info of what a neutrino is), and directly jump into the interesting staff about it.
Don't panic , I will make 26ai and True cache be on the spotlight in the middle of this article, and finalize accordingly. Note that, my next blog post will be technical, I will make you understand the True cache via a short demo. But! With this post, I will make it interesting first and whet our appetites.
Let's really start now. The Neutrino, a ghostly, nearly massless subatomic particle with no electric charge that can zip through an entire planet without ever touching an atom.
For a long time, we thought neutrinos were massless. But if they were truly massless, they would travel at the speed of light. According to Einstein’s Special Relativity, for anything traveling at the speed of light, time stands still. (Actually, the concept of time ceases to be valid for an observer moving at the speed of light, but let's not get into that now.)
An object with no internal clock cannot change; it cannot evolve. A massless neutrino would be frozen in whatever state it started in.
However; it was discovered that Neutrinos oscillate, they change their flavor as they travel. So it meant and proved that they have mass. Because they have mass, time flows for them. Because time flows for them, they can transition.
So let's bind this to Oracle 26ai :) As you may already guess, 26ai is giving mass and speed to the enterprise database layer. Now, with 26ai our data in our core databases transform from being massless --static-- to being intelligent -- evolving.
In this context, AI-related capabilities (like the vector space, embeddings and vector search) in Oracle Database is what gives mass to information.
In traditional RDBMS, data was often like a massless neutrino. A string was just a string, a number was just a number. It moved fast, but it didn't evolve or carry meaning within the database itself. It had no internal clock for context.
With Oracle Database 26ai (and earlier with 23ai), we add mass (intelligence) to our data. By representing data as vectors , the database now understands the semantic weight of information. Just as a neutrino’s mass allows it to change flavor, Vector capabilities of 26ai allows our data to transition from bits into meaningful insights.
**Technically, it's the embedding process -- the model that generates the vectors-- that adds the meaning, and we got that inside the Oracle Database.. (Oracle AI Database 26ai includes an ONNX runtime engine for running embedding models directly inside the database.. We have VECTOR_EMBEDDING function and all that...)
Our database is no longer a static observer; it understands the closeness of notions of data, just as gravity acts on objects with mass.
Well.. Let's continue with the True cache. The speed of light problem in our data architectures. I mean, we want our applications to be fast. But especially in distributed systems, as the distance between APP and DB increases, latency increases too.. Latency in this context takes us away from being fast. (Like in physics; the further the observer, the more latency ...)
This is where caching comes in, but! we will go with Oracle True Cache here!
In our context, in our analogical view, we said AI Vector Search brings mass. If it is so, True Cache brings the velocity. True Cache is an in-memory cache. It is eventually consistent with the primary at a very tight lag window. It is transparent cache that logically sits in front of the primary database. It is beneficial both in standalone environments and in distributed environments. True Cache can be clustered, or it can also be positioned as a sharded cache (one true cache for finance data for the finance app, one true cache for sales data from the sales app, or sales module of the main app) Besides, True Cache is easy to manage (almost auto managed), built on top of proven Oracle Technologies, and tightly integrated with the Oracle Database. (I will get into that in more details in my next blog post)
So far so good. Well, in physics, your perception of time depends on where you are. In IT, your perception of current data depends on your cache. Unlike traditional side-caches that have serving risk of stale data, and managed explicitly; true Cache is for managed by Oracle.
It’s like having a neutrino detector right at the edge of the galaxy. It allows the application to read at RAM speed while staying perfectly synchronized with the proper time (SCN) of the primary instance.
Of course we must have the necessary tech investment to ensure that. I mean, we shouldn't wait so long to get the data we want to be present on True Cache. True cache have the technology. But! the it shouldn't wait that data to be delivered to its memory structure for so long. The True Cache shouldn't wait the compute, the computational power to be utilized to it for serving the data we need (network and compute I mean...)
True Cache ensures that even though you are moving fast, your clock (data consistency) remains valid. You get the speed of a nearly massless particle (It's just a cute analogy, of course:) without losing the identity of the data. (like without losing the flavor of a neutrino :)
At this point, I want you to note that, I wanted my claim to be appealing .. I mean the one about the speed of True Cache and the analogy about the data consistency..
But! I also don't want to make physicists angry. That's why, I feel the need to clarify that, in relativity, increasing velocity dilates time.. So it slows our clock relative to a stationary observer, whereas True Cache does the opposite: it reduces perceived latency while keeping the clock (SCN) synchronized.. Well, analogies are hard and risky :) again here we see :)
Before finalizing, I want to remind you the JSON Relational duality. Again with the metaphorical bridge to physics. Through the duality views, applications can access (read or change) the same data as either a collection of JSON documents or as a set of related tables and columns.
So basically, we may think it like, store the data in relation tabular format, but if needed serve it in JSON. Apps that need document mode, can use document APIs to get the data, apps like analytical engines can use languages such as SQL, PL/SQL, C, and JavaScript and get the data in relational mode, directly as rows and columns.
So this make it possible to store the same data in two states at once. Like the "Particle-Wave Duality" of data :), isn't it?
Okay. We pushed hard for the metaphors, now let's conclude it with the finalization.
How did we start? We started with the subject of neutrinos and connected it to the Vector capabilities of Oracle Database 26ai, so our conclusion for that is : "If a neutrino had no mass, the universe would be a static, boring place where nothing ever changes. If our database has no AI mass, our data will remain static, and our applications will eventually lose their flavor in the face of modern requirements." :)
We already pushed hard with the metaphors for explaining the value of True Cache and JSON Relation duality, so I will not give a conclusion for those :)
My final words will be for us, the DBA(s), APPS DBA(s) and Architects. We are no longer just administrators or architects. We are the observers of a data universe that is finally beginning to behave according to the laws of intelligence and speed.
So, we should stay curious, keep learning, and we should not be afraid to add a little mass to our career :)
Until we meet again...
