Oracle Database 19c The New Long Term Release

Oracle Database 19c is the final, and therefore ‘long term support’ release of the Oracle Database 12c family of products (which includes Oracle Database 18c). ‘Long term support’ means that Oracle Database 19c include premier support planned through March 2023 and extended support through March 2026.

Whereas Oracle 18C was technically just a refresh to 12.2.0.1, and at one point was going to be released as 12.2.0.2, . 19c is the new recommended Database to deploy for stability over the next few years.

Oracle used the release of 18c a few years ago to change how releases are both named and managed. This change in the release cycle puts Oracle in alignment with the rest of the industry that uses the year of the release as the version number. Therefore 19c should be seen as a patch update to 12.2 rather than a completely new version.

Oracle’s New Continuous Delivery Model

Oracle is now moving to continuous development cycle, putting new features into the hands of the DBA and developers sooner.

Continuous delivery, also known as agile development, allows software features to be delivered very much quicker than the traditional model. Oracle 11g was released in September 2007 and is still used by many Oracle customers. However this model of releases means that moving to Oracle 12c resulted in hundreds of changes. These small yearly releases means more features are available sooner together with fewer changes to the application software.

However for customers that want stability rather than features then 19c is for you (full support for at least 5 years).