Oracle Autonomous Database: The Self-Driving Cloud Future

At Oracle CloudWorld, two major themes stood out for the future: multicloud strategy—where businesses can run workloads seamlessly across multiple service providers—and autonomous databases that self-manage without human intervention. 

Oracle has made significant strides with its autonomous solutions, particularly the Oracle Autonomous Database (OAD). This fully managed cloud service automates critical tasks like provisioning, backups, and scaling, all while adjusting resources based on demand with no downtime. Built on Oracle Database, it supports standard SQL*Net connections for compatibility with existing apps and tools. Plus, it offers elastic scalability for compute and storage, ensuring high performance and availability while simplifying database management. 

Self-Driving Management: The Power of Oracle Autonomous Database

Oracle Autonomous Database (OAD) revolutionizes operations with its self-configuring and self-managing capabilities, reducing manual interventions and minimizing errors. It narrows the skills gap for routine tasks while enhancing security by cutting down on human-driven mistakes. But it doesn’t make specialized roles obsolete—in fact, it highlights the need for strategic roles in IT, data governance, and integration. 

That’s where we come in. We’ll help you find the right talent and integration strategy to get the most out of these technologies. Let’s explore the future of your organization together! 

What Does Oracle Autonomous Database Include?

As we said, Oracle Autonomous Database is compatible with existing apps. However, it also includes several tools developed by Oracle itself. The main ones are:  

• Oracle APEX: A low-code platform for building scalable, secure enterprise applications.

• Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS): A Java-based service for developing RESTful interfaces for relational data and JSON Document Store.

• Database Actions: A web-based interface that provides development, data tools, administration, and monitoring features via ORDS.

• Oracle Machine Learning Notebooks: A web-based platform for data engineers, analysts, and scientists to write code, create visualizations, and perform data analytics, including machine learning tasks.

Oracle Autonomous Database Features Analysis

There are many reasons to consider Oracle Cloud for your business. However, there are many more when it comes to Oracle Autonomous Database, as it’s an affordable, feature-rich service in the cloud. Nevertheless, OAD’s main features can be summarized as it follows:  

• Managed Database Services.

• Fully Elastic Scaling.

• Auto Scaling.

• High Performance and Compatibility.

• Disaster Recovery.

In the following sections, we will analyze each one of them.  However, bear in mind that, to use it properly, it is necessary to analyze how to adapt this cloud-service to achieve your objectives. In this sense, it’s no different from any digital transformation process. As such, integration is essential since it creates the dataflow needed to operate. So, let’s meet and see the best way to integrate OAD into your business. 

1. Managed Database Services

Oracle Autonomous Database automates all major aspects of database management, simplifying the process for users. This includes: 

• Provisioning new databases.

• Handling upgrades.

• Performing backups.

• Restoring data.

Since users no longer need to manually manage these operations, this end-to-end database management automation allows to reduce complexity and operational overhead. Besides, it also ensures the database is always up-to-date and running efficiently, freeing up resources for other tasks. 

2. Fully Elastic Scaling

This is one of the most significant Oracle Autonomous Database features, as fully elastic scaling allows users to independently scale compute and storage resources. In other words, OAD databases can grow or shrink based on workload demands without causing any downtime.  

But, besides operational flexibility, users can also consolidate database instances into elastic resource pools that scale up and down dynamically. This way, OAD provides compute cost savings of up to 87% compared to paying for each instance individually.  This leads to more cost efficiency by precisely sizing the database to fit your requirements, with the option to scale on demand. 

3. Auto Scaling

Auto-scaling allows Oracle Autonomous Database to dynamically adjust its resources based on usage. In other words, it can automatically use more CPU, IO, or additional storage when necessary, without requiring manual intervention. This way, it can handle unpredictable workloads, providing optimal performance at all times. Additionally, auto scaling is enabled by default for compute and storage resources ensuring flexibility in managing resource demands. 

4. High Performance and Compatibility

Oracle Autonomous Database offers optimized query performance for concurrent workloads, providing high efficiency even for complex queries. The key is its capability to support seamless integration with existing applications. For this, it uses three types of connections: SQL*Net, JDBC, and ODBC. In the following table, we tell you what they are and their applications: 

5. Autonomous Data Guard and Backup-Based Disaster Recovery

Security is always a sensitive topic when it comes to cloud services. That’s why OAD provides advanced disaster recovery options. On one hand, it includes Autonomous Data Guard, which ensures data protection by automatically creating standby database. This is continuously updated with changes from the primary database, so it can always ensure your information. Additionally, you can deploy standbys locally or across regions for added resilience. 

On the other hand, Backup-Based Disaster Recovery offers a cost-effective alternative by utilizing existing backups to instantiate a peer database during a switchover or failover. While it has a higher Recovery Time Objective (RTO) than Autonomous Data Guard, it reduces costs by leveraging local backups. And while it is true that cross-region backup recovery incurs additional charges, it still provides robust recovery options. 

Multi-cloud support on Oracle Autonomous Database

As Larry Elisson pointed out in this year’s CloudWorld, we are entering the multi-cloud era. This means that customers have the freedom to use multiple clouds together and, in fact, these kinds of digital transformation strategies are increasingly being applied to give flexibility to operate with the best computing environment for each workload.  

In this regard, OAD offers robust multi-cloud capabilities, enabling businesses to leverage its services across multiple cloud infrastructures and environments. But, while this kind of support has many uses and varies according to each client’s needs, it has four key features. In the following sections, we will see each one of these integrations. 

1. Oracle Database@Azure

This integration allows users to run OAD with OCI-level performance, security, and availability within Microsoft Azure. This setup facilitates innovation by enabling the use of Azure services like Kubernetes and OpenAI Service, allowing businesses to develop cloud-native applications more efficiently. Additionally, it provides proven migration solutions for moving on-premises databases to this platform, simplifying the transition process. 

2. Oracle Database@Google Cloud

Like its Azure counterpart, this integration service lets organizations run OAD natively in Google Cloud, combining it with Google’s capabilities such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Vertex AI. This integration aims to accelerate application development and provide deeper insights, enhancing overall operational efficiency and support. 

3. Seamless Data Access

Oracle Autonomous Database muti-cloud capabilities also offer the ease of accessing data as if operating in a single cloud environment while functioning seamlessly across multiple clouds. It securely integrates with leading cloud storage solutions, offering both flexibility and usability in data management.  

For instance, by connecting with platforms like ServiceNow, organizations can automate IT workflows and enhance data analytics, facilitating real-time insights into IT operations. This integration could streamline businesses processes, improve decision-making, and optimize service delivery, leveraging the advanced capabilities of OAD across a multi-cloud infrastructure. 

4. Native Cloud Services Integration

With this multi-cloud capabilities, users can leverage a variety of native cloud services across DevOps, data integration, security, identity management, and analytics. This facilitates organizations to have a comprehensive approach to cloud solutions without the complexities typically associated with those types of setups. 

AI and Machine Learning in Oracle Autonomous Database

OAD also includes AI and ML capabilities to streamline data analytics and app development. With features like natural language processing, users can interact with their data without needing in-depth knowledge of SQL or data structures, making it accessible to a broader range of users. Additionally, it also counts with Agentic AI autonomous decision-making for identifying similar unstructured data in some features like AI Vector Search. 

On the other hand, the select AI functionality allows businesses to combine proprietary data with generative AI while ensuring that sensitive information remains secure within Oracle Cloud. It also supports various programming languages (Python, R, SQL) and, integrated with third-party packages, enhances flexibility in model development, empowering users to harness advanced analytics capabilities. 

Workload types of Oracle Autonomous Database

Let’s now talk about another of the Oracle Autonomous Database essentials: the workload types. They refer to the different categories of database operations that can be optimized based on specific application needs. These are:

• Data Warehouse: Optimized for analytic workloads, such as data marts, data warehouses, data lakes, and data lake-houses. It’s designed to handle complex queries and large datasets efficiently.

• Transaction Processing: Suitable for running transactional, analytical, and batch workloads concurrently. Ideal for applications that require high transaction throughput.

• JSON: A cloud document database service aimed at simplifying the development of JSON-centric applications. Allows for easy handling of semi-structured data.

• APEX: A low-code application development platform that enables the creation and deployment of modern cloud, mobile, and data-driven applications with minimal coding effort.

How Is Oracle Autonomous Database Billed?

The way OAD is billed has also some particularities. Basically, Oracle will bill you only based on two parameters: compute and storage. But, since the service seamlessly escalate and deescalate as you need, you can select values for these parameters when you provision or scale an OAD instance. In other words, this ensures that usage and billing are aligned with your application needs, resulting in a significant reduction in costs. 

First, it reduces management and licensing costs by an average of 45%. Second, it also cuts user productivity lost to downtime, allowing organizations to lower their total cost of operations by an average of 63%. In addition, it drops the deploying time of the new database by an average of 84%. Finally, if OAD is applied correctly, it could leads to a significant increase in ROI, with an average five-year return of 417%. 

OAD billing models

There are two billing models for Oracle Autonomous Database depending on the workload you choose. In the following table you will find what you need to know: 

Oracle Autonomous Database vs Oracle Database

Now let’s look at a little bit at the difference between Oracle Database and its Autonomous counterpart. While they both support data models, what sets them apart is the automated and deep context understanding capabilities of OAD. But, to save you valuable time, we’ll summarize this in the following table: 

Integration: The key to incorporating Oracle Autonomous Database

Oracle Autonomous Database offers many benefits for businesses. It not only reduces human errors and automates tasks through its autonomous capabilities but also changes the way businesses interact with cloud platform services, giving organizations more freedom than ever to manage and organize their apps at their convenience. However, like any other digital transformation process, integration is the key to success. 

By integrating your organization, you facilitate connectivity across data sources and applications, eliminating barriers and giving OAD access to the necessary information needed to operate at full capacity. However, this also must be aligned with your goals. But don’t worry! At Inclusion Cloud we can help you plan the right integration process for you. Let’s have a meeting and see the future of your business together. Also, follow us on LinkedIn to stay updated with the latest industry trends.