Oracle Database 23ai: What Actually Changed and What Matters
A developer-focused tour of Oracle Database 23ai — vector search, JSON-relational duality, the DX wins that matter, and what the version bump doesn't change.
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Oracle Notebook
Practical deep dives on Oracle's stack.
Practical notes on Oracle — APEX, Database, OCI, SQL & PL/SQL.
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Recent posts
All posts →OCI AI Services: Pre-Built AI for Common Workloads
A tour of the five OCI AI Services — Language, Vision, Speech, Document Understanding, Forecasting — and the situations in which each is the right tool.
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OCI Generative AI Service: Managed LLMs in Oracle Cloud
Oracle's managed-LLM offering on OCI — the models available, how it compares to Azure OpenAI and AWS Bedrock, and the RAG pattern that ties it to Oracle Database vector search.
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Oracle Select AI: Natural Language Queries Against Your Data
What Oracle Select AI actually is, how to set it up, the four actions you can run, and the honest limitations for production use.
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Oracle Machine Learning: SQL-Native ML in the Database
What Oracle Machine Learning actually is, the three flavors (SQL, Python, R), where it's the right tool, and where it isn't.
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Oracle APEX Page Designer: A Mental Model
How to think about Page Designer's panes, panels, and properties as a single coherent system — and the practical habits that make APEX development less frustrating.
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Understanding Oracle's Cost-Based Optimizer
How Oracle's CBO chooses execution plans, why it sometimes gets it wrong, and the practical levers — statistics, histograms, hints, baselines — for fixing bad plans.
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Earlier posts
SQL Window Functions: The Patterns Worth Knowing in Oracle
The seven window-function patterns I actually use in production Oracle SQL — running totals, ranking, top-N-per-group, period comparisons, and more.
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Oracle Database Editions: Standard, Enterprise, and Express Explained
A practical guide to the four Oracle Database editions — what each gives you, when to pick which, and the common mistakes that cost real money.
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Oracle Integration Cloud: The Developer's View
What Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) actually does, the patterns it handles well, and where it stops being the right tool.
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Oracle GoldenGate: When You Need It (and When You Don't)
A practical view of GoldenGate — what it does, where it earns its license, and the simpler alternatives that often do the job.
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Oracle Analytics Cloud: A Practical Look
What Oracle Analytics Cloud is good at, where it lags Power BI and Tableau, and the specific situations in which OAC is the right BI choice.
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Oracle Exadata: What Makes It Actually Fast
A practical look at the engineering behind Exadata — Smart Scan, Hybrid Columnar Compression, Smart Flash Cache, RDMA — and the workloads where it earns its price.
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Oracle Autonomous Database: When It's Worth It (and When It Isn't)
A developer-focused take on what Oracle Autonomous Database actually does, where it earns its price, and where you'll be paying for features you don't need.
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PL/SQL Patterns That Pay Off in Real Projects
Eight practical PL/SQL patterns that consistently make production code faster, safer, and easier to maintain — with examples.
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Oracle APEX in 2026: What It Actually Is (and What It Isn't)
A clear, opinionated take on what Oracle APEX really is, what it's good at, and the misconceptions that keep developers from giving it a fair look.
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