I recently had the honor of participating in an intensive week of Oracle 12c Release 2 (12cR2) beta testing during the week of April 25-29 at Oracle HQ in Belmont, CA. I joined an elite team of ten Oracle ACEs and ACE Directors to explore the latest features of Oracle 12cR2. It was a most intense experience, as we tested 12cR2 (quite literally!) from sun-up to sun-down for four straight days. We focused our combined attention on installation and upgrade tasks that any Oracle DBA would normally conduct as they’d transition from earlier releases to 12cR2; we also experimented with many of the latest features of 12cR2, including Database Sharding, Multitenancy, and Database In Memory.
What amazed me personally was the responsiveness of the Oracle development team, who were on hand to help us document and research any unexpected behavior, blips, and documentation consistency. Punctuating our testing efforts were several in-depth briefings on the various new features of Oracle 12cR2 from key Oracle senior product managers including Penny Avril, Maria Colgan, Andy Rivenes, Patrick Wheeler, and Markus Michalewicz.
Our beta testing team presented our findings on the final day. Most of the 12cR2 development team and many of the corresponding senior product managers attended. It was also humbling to see Andy Mendelsohn stopping by briefly to hear our reports. With over 200 years of Oracle database experience between us, our beta testing group was quite pleased with what we discovered about 12cR2 in terms of its numerous new features, its stability, and its ease of use. I’d love to tell you more … but if you’re not in the beta testing program, you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer to experience 12cR2 for yourself.
