Oracle has released a free version of Oracle Database 23c. It addresses the growing demand from developers and organizations worldwide for access to the latest features in Oracle Database 23c “App Simple”.

Developers can now access innovative Oracle Database features that make it easier to develop modern data-driven applications, preparing them for the planned release of Oracle Database 23c.

“With Oracle Database 23c Free–Developer Release, developers will be able to level up their skills and start building new apps using breakthrough features such as the JSON Relational Duality which unifies the Relational and Document data models providing the best of both worlds, SQL support for Graph queries directly on OLTP data, and Stored Procedures in the world’s most popular programming language – JavaScript”,

said Juan Loaiza, executive vice president, mission-critical database technologies, Oracle.

Oracle Database 23c Free-Developer Release can be downloaded as a Docker Image, VirtualBox VM or Linux RPM installation file without requiring a user account or login. A Windows version is planned to be added soon.

“Oracle Database 23c Free–Developer Release is designed to remove obstacles to developer access, allowing devs to define the ecosystem without requiring permission. This is a radical departure for Oracle”,

said James Governor, co-founder of RedMonk.

Oracle Database 23c Free–Developer Release includes:

JSON Relational Duality: Developers can build applications in either relational or JSON paradigms with a single source of truth and benefit from the strengths of both—relational and document models. Data is held once, but can be accessed, written, and modified with either approach. Developers benefit from the best of both JSON and relational models, including ACID compliant transactions and concurrency controls, which means they no longer have to make tradeoffs between complex object-relational mappings or data inconsistency issues.

JavaScript Stored Procedures (powered by GraalVM): JavaScript code can now be executed closer to data than ever before by writing JavaScript Stored Procedures or loading existing JavaScript libraries into Oracle Database. Support for JavaScript code improves developer productivity by allowing reuse of existing business logic straight inside the data tier and reuse of JavaScript developer skills. JavaScript code invocation can be intermixed with SQL and PL/SQL, providing polyglot programming language support.

JSON Schema: Developers can now ensure and validate JSON document structures via industry-standard JSON Schemas, enabling the confident and reliable use of the JSON data format.

Operational Property Graphs: Developers can now build both transactional and analytical property graph applications with Oracle Database, using its industry-leading, new SQL standard property graph queries support, including running graph analytics on top of both relational and JSON data.

Oracle Kafka APIs: Kafka applications can now run against Oracle Database Transactional Event Queues with minimal code changes. This enables much more robust microservices built using transactional events that perform event operations and database changes in a single atomic transaction.

SQL Domains: The new domain construct can act as lightweight type modifiers that centrally document intended data usage, extending and drastically improving SQL standard domains. This allows developers to better understand how data is used and improves overall data quality, without the complexity and incompatibility of usage-specific data types or user-defined types.

Annotations: Database metadata can now be stored directly alongside the data with the new annotation mechanism inside the Oracle Database. Developers can annotate common data model attributes for tables, columns, views, indexes, and more—providing a central, lightweight, declarative facility to register and exchange usage properties across applications. Storing the metadata along with the data guarantees consistency and universal accessibility to any user or application that uses the data.