The Oracle Database Features Site – reducing Oracle Documentation Drudgery

If there’s one thing Teddy approves of it’s eating you’re own Dog Food…although, he does appreciate the value of a varied diet…

Some nameless heroes in the Oracle Documentation Team seem to agree and have produced a publicly available APEX application which allows you to search:

• the features available in each successive Oracle release
• the various licensing options and packs available with each Edition

Time to head on over to the Oracle Database Features site and take a closer look…

Features

I’ve heard a fair bit about schema only accounts. I wonder when they came along ?

It looks like they have been around since 18c with further enhancements in later releases.
If I want details on a particular listing, I can just click on the title :

As you can see, there’s also a link to the relevant documentation.

It’s also possible to do a less specific search. For example, if I’m looking to upgrade from 11.2 to 19c and I want to see all of the new features in all of the intermediate releases :

The application also allows you to focus on areas of interest.
For example, If I want to see what’s new in 21c as far as Analytic Functions are concerned,
I can choose Data Warehousing/Big Data as my focus area then further refine my search by specifying Analytic Functions as the Sub Area of Interest.
Together with checking 21c as the Version and that I’m interested in New features only, the Application returns this :

Limitations

It’s worth noting that the information in this application is based on the New Features documentation for the respective Oracle versions. Therefore, whilst you’ll find an entry for the VALIDATE_CONVERSION SQL function, introduced in 12.1…

Licensing

Selecting the Licensing tab reveals functionality for navigating the often complex area of Oracle Licensing.
For example, if we want to find out which Editions Partitioning is available on :

Once again, further details are available by clicking on the title of a result row :

The Oracle Database Features site is a welcome augmentation to the existing documentation.
It’s categorised and searchable content offer the potential for significant saving in time and effort, especially when you’re preparing to move between Oracle versions.