Oracle have (at the regional Oracle CloudWorld event in Singapore) just announced Oracle Database 23c Free Developer Release. If you are familiar with Oracle Database, you will know all about Oracle Database XE (if you are not, see here). This announcement is effectively a replacement of what would have been Oracle XE 23, built and made available with developers in mind. Ultimately, this new offering gives developers “early access” to build new applications, enhance or upgrade existing applications using all of the new features that 23c offers.

What new features are available?

Oracle Database 23c Free introduces tons of new features and functionality – including but not limited to:

• JSON Relational Duality: Bridging the gap between JSON documents and relational data. This feature will allow you to access and modify data as JSON documents or from within tables. Data is held once but can be accessed, written, and modified with either approach.
• JavaScript Stored Procedures: Providing the ability to execute JavaScript code closer to your data. You can write JavaScript stored procedures or import JavaScript libraries directly in your Oracle Database. JS code can also be invoked from SQL and PL/SQL
• JSON Schema: Validation of JSON document structures against JSON schemas
• Oracle Kafka APIs: Run Kafka applications against Oracle Database Transactional Events Queue
• Application Usage Annotations: Annotate and describe data with annotations

How can you get it?

There are a few methods to get your hands on Oracle DB 23c Free.

• Docker Image
• VirtualBox VM
• Linux RPM File

How can you install it?

To start using Oracle Database 23c Free – Developer Release using the VirtualBox appliance, see my post: Oracle Database 23c Free – Developer Release: Installing & Using VirtualBox Appliance

Things to note

• You can find the Oracle documentation for Oracle Database 23c Free here.
• You can read the Oracle announcement here.
• With Oracle Database 23c set to be generally available within the next 12 months or so, Oracle Database 23c Free will give a head-start in learning or adapting so that you are ready to go very quickly once 23c lands . Note however, that as this is only a developer release ahead of GA… that would typically indicate that this is likely to not be the final version and it is not certain that any bug fixes or feature enhancements will not make their way into a new release of this product until 23c is generally available – don’t bank on your developments working first time when GA arrives.
• To keep up to date with reported bugs (or raise one yourself), visit the Developer Community Forum where the product management team will be willing to help and you can be part of improving the product that will come.

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Stay tuned, I will write some more on this topic soon.