Release Update 19.10 Features

Ability to Use Multiple Kerberos Principals with a Single Database Client

Starting with this release, when you configure Kerberos authentication for an Oracle Database client, you can specify multiple Kerberos principals with a single Oracle Database client.

To enable this functionality, you will need to create a separate credential cache for each user in the client and then use the connect string to specify the user.

In previous releases, you were restricted to one Kerberos principal for each Oracle Database client.

DBMS_CLOUD Package

Oracle provides two core mechanisms to work with data in object stores, as part of the new DBMS_CLOUD package or manually defining external tables.

Using DBMS_CLOUD provides benefits and additional functionality that goes beyond DDL and is fully compatible with Oracle Autonomous Database. Oracle strongly recommends leveraging the new DBMS_CLOUD package over manual external table creation.

New Database Initialization Parameters for Database Resident Connection Pooling (DRCP)

New database initialization parameters, MIN_AUTH_SERVERS and MAX_AUTH_SERVERS, have been added to configure Database Resident Connection Pooling (DRCP).

MIN_AUTH_SERVERS and MAX_AUTH_SERVERS allow the number of processes used to handle session authentication for DRCP to be configured for optimal usage.

Oracle Blockchain Table

Blockchain tables are append-only tables in which only insert operations are allowed. Deleting rows is either prohibited or restricted based on time. Rows in a blockchain table are made tamper-resistant by special sequencing and chaining algorithms. Users can verify that rows have not been tampered. A hash value that is part of the row metadata is used to chain and validate rows.

Blockchain tables can be used to implement blockchain applications where the participants trust the Oracle Database provider, but want means to verify that their data hasn’t been tampered with. The participants are different database users who trust the Oracle Database provider to maintain a verifiable, tamper-resistant blockchain of transactions. All participants must have privileges to insert data into the blockchain table. The contents of the blockchain table are defined and managed by the application, with a few added metadata fields maintained by Oracle Database. By leveraging a trusted provider with verifiable crypto-secure data management practices, such applications can avoid the distributed consensus requirements. This provides most of the protection of the distributed peer-to-peer blockchains, but with much higher throughput and lower transaction latency compared to peer-to-peer blockchains using distributed consensus.

Oracle Instant Client Support for Linux for ARM

Starting with Oracle Database 19c Release Update (19.10), Oracle Instant Client is available on Linux for ARM (aarch64).

You can install Oracle Instant Client by downloading either the zip files or RPMs from the Oracle Instant Client download page on Oracle Technology Network (OTN).

Support Per-PDB Capture for Oracle Autonomous Database

To securely capture and replicate individual PDB changes to Oracle Autonomous Database, you can now use Oracle GoldenGate to provide per-PDB capture.

You can now provide local user credentials to connect to an individual PDB in a multitenant architecture Oracle Database, and replicate the data from just that PDB to an Oracle Autonomous Database. You no longer need to create a common user with access to all PDBs on the multitenant container database (CDB) to replicate a PDB to an Oracle Autonomous Database. Instead, you can now provision a local user with a predefined set of privileges to the source PDB that you want to capture. All LogMiner and Capture processing takes place only in this PDB, and only data from this specific PDB is captured and written to the Oracle GoldenGate trail. As part of this feature, the behavior for V$LOGMNR_CONTENTS changes, depending on whether you connect to a PDB, or connect to the CDB$ROOT.

Updated Support for Micro Edition Suite (MES) for FIPS 140.2

Starting with this release, Oracle Database supports Micro Edition Suite (MES) version 4.5 for FIPS 140.2.

The Micro Edition Suite (MES) version 4.5 updates include four new CVEs in the RSA BSAFE MES library, support for the rules that FIPS 140.2 requires, and access to the updated NZ/ZT library from the Crypto Foundation.

This enhancement enables the Oracle Database FIPS 140.2 configuration to benefit from new features and security improvements available from the latest RSA BSAFE MES library.