What's New in Oracle 19c, 21c, 23ai and 26ai

63.1 Oracle 19c (Long-Term Release)

Automatic Indexing, real-time statistics, high-frequency stats (Exadata/ADB)

SQL Quarantine, SQL plan management enhancements, hint usage reporting

Active Data Guard DML redirection, automatic flashback of standby after primary flashback

Hybrid partitioned tables, LISTAGG DISTINCT, JSON enhancements (JSON_MERGEPATCH, JSON_SERIALIZE)

Schema-only accounts, privilege analysis in EE, gradual password rollover (19.12)

Blockchain tables (19.10), SQL Macros (19.7), up to 3 PDBs without the Multitenant license

AutoUpgrade, In-Memory Base Level (19.8)

63.2 Oracle 21c (Innovation Release)

Native JSON data type, JSON_TRANSFORM, multivalue indexes

Blockchain and immutable tables, SQL macros, EXCEPT / ALL set operators, WINDOW clause, GROUPS frames, EXCLUDE

Automatic In-Memory, In-Memory hybrid scans, persistent memory store

JavaScript execution (MLE) with DBMS_MLE, PL/SQL iteration controls and qualified-expression enhancements

Gradual password rollover, Automatic Zone Maps, attention log Non-CDB architecture desupported

63.3 Oracle Database 23ai (Long-Term Release)

AI Vector Search: VECTOR type, VECTOR_DISTANCE, HNSW/IVF vector indexes, ONNX in-database embeddings, DBMS_VECTOR(_CHAIN), hybrid vector indexes, Select AI

JSON Relational Duality Views, JSON Schema, SQL/PGQ property graphs

BOOLEAN SQL data type, SQL domains, annotations, SELECT without FROM DUAL

IF [NOT] EXISTS for DDL, GROUP BY alias/position, table value constructor (VALUES with multiple rows)

Direct joins in UPDATE/DELETE, RETURNING OLD/NEW, DEFAULT ON NULL FOR INSERT AND UPDATE

Wide tables (4,096 columns), TIME_BUCKET, interval aggregation, CEIL/FLOOR for dates

SQL transpiler (PL/SQL functions to SQL expressions) MLE JavaScript stored procedures and modules, Oracle Database API for MongoDB, Kafka APIs for TxEventQ

DB_DEVELOPER_ROLE, schema-level privileges Operations and performance

Lock-free reservations, priority transactions, session-less transactions

True Cache, real-time SQL plan management, shrink tablespace

Raft-based replication for Globally Distributed Database Per-PDB Data Guard

Fast ingest, automatic transaction rollback SQL Firewall, column-level audit, traditional auditing desupported

Azure AD / Entra ID and OCI IAM token authentication, TLS 1.3, schema privileges

63.4 Oracle AI Database 26ai

Announced in October 2025 as the next long-term release, superseding 23ai. It's delivered as an update on the 23ai code base, so 23ai features carry forward.

Focus: agentic AI in the database (in-database AI agents, Select AI Agent), deeper vector search and RAG capabilities, MCP server support for AI tools, AI-assisted development, open data lakehouse integration (Apache Iceberg), and quantum-resistant encryption.

Release details and feature names evolve. Always check the official "New Features Guide" and "Licensing Information User Manual" for the exact version you deploy.