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Oracle announced the availability of Oracle Database 23c Free version yesterday.
Oracle Database 23c Free Announcement
Gerald Venzi talked for about an hour about the new free version of Oracle database. Many of those ideas he also talked about in his blog post.
As a PoepleSoft developer, the selection, maintenance, and upgrade of the backend database is not part of what we do. For the most part, we’re not even invited into the room when those decisions are made. If the architects are smart, they will invite a few weathered developers to share their experience with the different databases and ask for our opinions and the reasons behind our database joys and horror stories. Just try to explain DB2’s escalating locks to end users while trying to sell it as a good thing.
Something Gerald said during the talk really grabbed my attention. Oracle is releasing 23c Free to developers early. They want developers to have the chance to play with the new release and see what it can do before it lands on us like a moose falling out of the sky on a Thursday night when the DBAs and infrastructure team announce they are upgrading over the weekend.
Ok, some of those words are how I heard it and not exactly what he said.
…. And, sure, most times it’s not that sudden for the production environment. It’s usually just one or more test environments that are upgraded first. A canary in a production promotion path. Play (deal) with it, developers! … and let us know if there are any problems.
I’m hoping this change making the new products available to developers first is something that is catching on at Oracle. Developers are the wrench turners, the grease in the gears, the software whisperers. After all the design meetings and customer input, someone must actually write the program, put the field on a page and code that integration. Give us the tools first! Or at least at the same time.
I’ve been in the situation more than once where new technology was integrated at the UAT and Test level without making it available in the development environments first. Trust me, it just plugs in and works like magic. It’s fully integrated from the vendor… It said so in the executive summary. Your favorite horror movie usually ensues:
Management: Developers! Why isn’t this working?
Developers: Why isn’t what working?
-Life according to developers
I like this new idea from Oracle: give it to developers first.
So, if you want to play with the new Oracle Database 23c and want to give it a spin before another moose falls out of the sky, go ahead, download it and play with some of the new features. No, it doesn’t cost anything. Yes, there are constraints on it’s power. No, you can’t use it for a production environment. No, Oracle will not hold your hand and give you support for it.
But hey, how often do you get to play with the new toy before anyone else?
