Autonomous AI Database for Developers

Autonomous AI Database for Developers instances are free Autonomous AI Databases that developers can use to build and test new applications.

With Autonomous AI Database for Developers instances, you can try new Autonomous AI Database features for free and apply them to ongoing or new development projects. Developer database comes with limited resources and is, therefore, not suitable for large-scale testing and production deployments. When you need more compute or storage resources, you can transition to a paid database licensing by cloning your developer database into a regular Autonomous AI Database.

Requirements

To create an Autonomous AI Database for Developers, you must have access to Oracle Exadata Database Service or Autonomous AI Database on either a Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure or Exadata Cloud@Customer. In other words, only those customers with active subscriptions to any of the following service platforms can create developer databases:

  • Autonomous AI Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure
  • Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure
  • Autonomous AI Database on Exadata Cloud@Customer
  • Oracle Exadata Database Service on Cloud@Customer

There is no limit on the number of free developer databases; it’s limited by the capacity of your Exadata infrastructure.

Supported Oracle Database Versions

Autonomous AI Database for Developers can be created with Oracle Database 19c or Oracle Database 26ai, depending on the database software version of its parent Autonomous Container Database (ACD). For example, to create a developer database with Oracle Database 26ai, you must choose an ACD whose Oracle database software version is 26ai.

To know more about each database version, see Oracle Database 26ai or Oracle Database 19c on Oracle Help Center.

Provisioning Workflow

You can provision an Autonomous AI Database for Developers from the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) console or using API.

To create a developer database, you need an Autonomous Container Database (ACD) without an Autonomous Data Guard in an ECPU-based Autonomous Exadata VM Cluster (AVMC).

If you do not have these resources provisioned already, create the ECPU-based AVMC first and then create an ACD without disaster recovery (Autonomous Data Guard) using that AVMC.

After creating or identifying (if they already exist) the AVMC and ACD, you can create an Autonomous AI Database for Developers using them. Provisioning a developer database using the OCI console follows the same workflow as creating a regular Autonomous AI Database, as described in Create an Autonomous AI Database. Once created, the Autonomous AI Database for Developers instances appear with a Developer label in the list of Autonomous AI Databases on the OCI console.

Specifications

Each developer database comes with the following specifications:

  • Compute: Fixed 4 ECPUs, with no CPU scaling
  • Storage: Fixed 20 GB
  • Session limits: 30 concurrent database sessions
  • Workload type: Autonomous AI Lakehouse, Autonomous AI Transaction Processing

Excluded Features

Autonomous AI Database for Developers supports all the features offered by a regular Autonomous AI Database except those listed below. These limitations are in place to ensure that the developer databases are optimally used as a development sandbox.

Developer database instances:

  • Do not support Autonomous Data Guard. Hence, they can only be provisioned in an ACD without Autonomous Data Guard.
  • Support ECPU only. Therefore, you can provision them only on an ECPU based ACD.

  • Come with fixed compute and storage sizing, do not support manual or auto-scaling and storage scaling.

  • Can not have long-term backups.
  • Do not provide Database In-memory.

Supported Features

  • Cloning: The Autonomous AI Database for Developers offers fewer resources and features than the regular Autonomous AI Database. For non-development uses, such as load/stress testing and production, or to access all features, users can clone from a developer database to a regular Autonomous AI Database.

    You can also clone a regular database into a developer database. However, to successfully clone a regular database into a developer database, the actual used space of the source database, rounded up to the next GB, must be 32GB or less.

    See Clone an Autonomous AI Database for instructions.

  • Backup and Recovery: You can enable automatic backups or trigger manual backups of your developer database as needed. If the backup destination is an Object Storage and Recovery Service, the backups will be billed.
  • Service Maintenance: Developer databases follow the same patching schedule as regular Autonomous AI Database; however, they will not support critical one-off patches.
  • Database Application Development and Developer Tools: With Autonomous AI Database for Developers, you can use all the developer-related features and built-in tools that an Autonomous AI Database offers. See Develop Applications with Autonomous AI Database in Tasks and Service Monitoring in Features for complete details.

Autonomous AI Database for Developers comes with a service level objective (SLO) of 99.5%, and you can log service requests (SRs) to Oracle Support for assistance. However, there is no Severity 1 SR support for developer databases. See Create a Service Request in My Oracle Support to learn how to contact Oracle Support for assistance.