Why Autonomous Database?

Developers

Accelerate app innovation with built-in AI and your choice of LLM

• Use your choice of LLM, open source or proprietary. With Select AI, Autonomous Database automatically translates natural language into database queries and allows you to have a contextual conversation, without any custom coding or manual operations via a complex interface.
• Easily enable retrieval augmented generation (RAG) across your proprietary documents in various formats with the built-in vector store.
• Harness integrated AI services and in-database machine learning (ML) to enhance your apps with text and image analysis, speech recognition, or personalized recommendations.

Increase your app development velocity with one database that does it all

• Quickly react to business demands by using a single data platform that can meet all your needs, without integrating new databases. Autonomous Database allows you to use SQL, JSON documents, graph, geospatial, text, and vectors in a single database to rapidly build new features.
• Build apps for any workload, and even generate apps without writing code.
• Use the same Oracle Database, fully automated and cloud-based.

Deploy apps wherever you want at any scale

• Deploy your apps in the cloud or your data center with OCI’s distributed cloud offerings.
• Start small while allowing your apps to scale as needed with a database used by the most demanding applications—without rearchitecting your app or overspending on compute resources.
• Stay focused on AppDev using a database that helps you ensure uptime and safeguard data through automated security measures and continuous monitoring.

Analysts

Bring AI to your data

• Get quick insights from your data via contextual conversations in natural language, without complex manual operations.
• Use LLMs with built-in AI Vector Search and your proprietary data to get more accurate answers. There’s no need to duplicate data to a separate vector database.
• Rapidly build and deploy machine learning models in-database at scale—even without any coding.

Use self-service tools for every need

• Simply drag and drop to load and transform data; no need to call IT.
• Automatically discover hidden patterns without manually exploring your data.
• Visually answer difficult questions using built-in graph and spatial analytics.

Reduce complexity and costs

• Use one database for all data formats, instead of integrating and managing separate databases.
• Build a data lake in-database at object storage pricing, reducing complexity and latency.
• Scale up and down according to your actual needs, not via rigid, fixed-size instances that force you to spend more than necessary.

IT

Lower costs using one fully automated database

• Automate manual administrative tasks such as provisioning, backups, and monitoring.
• Use one database optimized for all workloads and data formats. No need to purchase, integrate, and manage specialty databases.
• Scale databases up and down according to your actual needs, not via rigid, fixed-size instances that force you to spend more than necessary.

Empower your developer community and business teams with AI

• Let developers and analysts easily interact with data using natural language. No integrations or cumbersome manual operations required.
• Enable retrieval augmented generation (RAG) across your proprietary data with built-in AI Vector Search.
• Provide developers and data scientists with the tools they need to build ML models—without moving data.

Minimize data security and downtime risks via automation

• Protect your data with automated threat detection and remediation.
• Keep your critical applications running by leveraging 99.995% availability.
• Use automation to reduce data security and downtime risks caused by human error.

Features

All workloads and data

Optimized for all workloads and data types

Get native support for all modern data types, workloads, and analytics built into a single service, giving developers a platform with fewer moving pieces and less complexity. Take advantage of an environment that supports applications or analytics at any scale or criticality without requiring time-consuming integration of multiple services or multiple specialty databases.

• All modern data formats are supported: relational, vector, graph, geospatial, JSON, text, and more. There’s no need to use numerous specialty databases for different data types.
• All modern workloads are supported: OLTP, IoT, temporal, ledger/blockchain, streaming, analytic, and more. There’s no need for different specialty databases to support different workloads.
• All modern analytics are supported: generative AI, advanced SQL, machine learning, graph analytics, text/search analytics, geospatial analytics, and more—all including data lake access. There’s no need to move data to specialty databases for analytics.
• All modern development styles and paradigms are supported: containers, events, REST, low code, microservices, CI/CD, and more. Simplify operations with a single database to support all your development needs.
• Create a single, secure environment quickly and safely with seamless and identical security across all data types and workloads.

Fast deployment

Newcomers to Oracle Autonomous Database can get up and running quickly with a minimal learning curve. Preexisting expertise in Oracle Database isn’t required to be productive with Autonomous Database.

• Deploy a new Autonomous Database of any size in minutes.
• IT staff don’t have to spend time on routine operations since Autonomous Database automatically takes care of them.
• Analysts can build better descriptive and predictive analytics using their preferred tools. Autonomous Database includes built-in AI, machine learning, graph, spatial, and text analytics and integrates with other databases, clouds, and data lakes to eliminate data silos.
• Developers have flexibility to use their tech stack, architecture, and approach of choice to build applications. There’s no need to use multiple specialty databases, and DevOps teams will find those applications easier to manage and perform operational reporting.

Easy cloud migration

Autonomous Database is a fully automated Oracle Database. It offers the easiest way to move Oracle Database workloads to the cloud.

• There’s no need to learn new database skills and languages because Autonomous Database fully supports PL/SQL.
• Analytics and apps from on-premises Oracle Database deployment are supported.
• Analyze your database estate to identify the best candidates to move today.
• Migrate your database to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) without downtime using Oracle Zero Downtime Migration. Accelerate your migration with guidance from cloud engineers on planning, architecting, prototyping, and managing cloud migrations through Oracle Cloud Lift Services.

Analytics

Self-service analytics

Line-of-business teams can deploy their own analytics environment without relying on IT staff by using an end-to-end data analytics ecosystem.

• Load and transform data from more than 100 applications, databases, and data lake sources without IT assistance using the Data Transforms tool within Oracle Autonomous Database Data Studio.
• Create complex analytic calculations with ease using the built-in data analysis tool in Data Studio—and share those calculations with your favorite tools, including Oracle Analytics Cloud, Tableau, Excel, and more.
• Share data securely, quickly, and openly within and outside your organization.
• Understand your data sources and track changes via the catalog feature in Data Studio.
• Easily access your data from spreadsheets with add-ins for Excel and Google Sheets.
• Empower your data scientists with built-in machine learning and graph algorithms, native Python and R support, and a built-in notebook UI.
• Ask questions through natural language conversations and get answers from your organization’s data in Autonomous Database using Select AI.

Prebuilt warehouses and connectors

Whether you’re using Oracle Fusion Applications or Oracle’s NetSuite, E-Business Suite, or PeopleSoft applications, take advantage of ready-to-use data models, pipelines, and analytics to put data to work quickly.

• Use insights from data in Oracle Cloud’s ERP, HCM, SCM, and CX application suites. Oracle Fusion Analytics Warehouse includes prebuilt KPIs, machine learning, and simpler data management.
• Ask natural language questions about E-Business Suite and get results through the Ask Oracle E-Business Suite chat app, enabled by Autonomous Database Select AI and OCI Generative AI service.
• Gain actionable insights from your NetSuite data. Oracle NetSuite Analytics Warehouse delivers powerful data analysis that drives actionable insights. Without relying on IT, business professionals can load data as well as quickly build and run their own analyses.
• Start getting new insights from your E-Business Suite data up to 70% faster than building analytics on your own. The E-Business Suite accelerator includes a prebuilt extract, transform, and load pipeline; data model; prebuilt KPIs; dashboards; and reports.

BI enablement

Business analysts and line-of-business teams can deliver business intelligence (BI) solutions using a wide variety of analytics and BI tools.

• Create shared business models (dimensions, hierarchies, measures, and “KPIs”) using Analytic Views across tools and applications to enable fast, reliable business insights.
• Use your favorite BI tools: Oracle Analytics Cloud, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Excel, and more. Each tool can share the same business model, simplifying analytics and ensuring consistent results.

Data lake analytics

Analyze all your data—both inside Autonomous Database and outside in data lakes or cloud storage using the same tools, processes, and access methods as the database.

• Query and analyze data in
  • Any cloud object storage, including OCI Object Storage, Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage
  • Any data lake file type: Parquet, Avro, JSON, csv, XLSX, and more
  • Any major data lake table structure, such as Delta tables or Iceberg tables
• Keep data secure using the native security policies of object storage combined with the advanced security of Autonomous Database.
• Run SQL queries directly against your object store source and correlate them with data stored in Autonomous Database.
• Instantly find and access enterprise data sets by leveraging OCI Data Catalog and AWS Glue metadata repositories.
• Use Apache Spark to analyze data in Autonomous Database with high performance.

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning

Innovate with AI and machine learning

Regardless of your skill set and existing knowledge of machine learning and AI, Autonomous Database provides a single platform where you can take analytics to the data using tools and languages that fit your needs.

• Use natural language to simplify how you get answers from your data. Select AI uses large language models (LLMs), so you can query your data without understanding the underlying data structure or SQL syntax. Easily build natural language query capabilities into your own SQL-based apps using new SQL AI extensions.
• Accelerate application development or create new business solutions by securely combining your private enterprise data in Autonomous Database with the productivity and creativity of generative AI using Select AI with OCI Generative AI. Data never leaves Oracle Cloud, is not shared with AI providers, and is secured using Oracle Database’s advanced security capabilities for data access.
• Use LLMs from other providers, such as Azure OpenAI and Google Gemini, when running Autonomous Database through Oracle Database@Google Cloud and Oracle Database@Azure.
• Store vectors as a native data type and use vector indexes and SQL functions to run a similarity search on those vectors. With AI Vector Search, you can quickly identify similar information from documents, images, and other unstructured data.
• Simply and quickly build test and development instances of your application and analytic databases using approximations of your real data. Keep your data safe by loading synthetic test data using generative AI and Autonomous Database’s metadata clone.
• Build and evaluate high-performing machine learning models without knowing how to code. AutoML provides UI-based access to machine learning for nonexperts. Keep models up to date using a no-code user interface that helps you prevent data drift and quality drift in ML models.
• Use resource description framework (RDF) and property graphs on operational data. Easily build graph applications with SQL using existing SQL development tools and frameworks through SQL property graphs. Visually explore and discover hidden connections in data using the Graph Studio feature.
• Add location intelligence to your analytics with interactive maps through Oracle Spatial Studio, a self-service, UI-driven web application.
• Choose your language—Python, R, or SQL—along with third-party packages to develop machine learning models and run them in-database at scale.

Application development

Natural language queries using generative AI

Autonomous Database speaks “human.”

• Simply ask a question using natural language with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)—it’s the simplest way to get answers about your business.
• Easily build natural language capabilities into your applications using Autonomous Database Select AI.

Low-code AppDev

Line-of-business analysts and nonprofessional developers can quickly develop smaller departmental applications as well as sophisticated enterprise-scale applications.

• Use Oracle APEX, an enterprise low-code application platform, to develop applications 20X faster and with 100X less code.
• Integrate advanced analytics into your applications with minimum coding using UI-based tools. Use Data Studio data analysis to build multidimensional models, AutoML, Oracle Spatial Studio, and Graph Studio (PDF).

Cloud native AppDev

Build microservices faster using a tech stack you know and make them easier for DevOps to operate.

• Use your favorite tools with support for open source frameworks, REST/JSON-based development, and a MongoDB-compatible API.
• Operationalize insights using built-in advanced analytics, including multidimensional models, machine learning, graph, spatial, and text without requiring the additional complexity of specialized analytic engines.
• Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is supported for any tool or application.
• Access data using Python with cx_Oracle, which conforms to the open-standards Python database API.
• Access and analyze all data, including JSON, graph, and spatial data using SQL.
• Keep data protected without downtime—your database deployment is secure by default and automatically kept up-to-date with the latest database and security patches.
• Develop applications using free options of Autonomous Database, either in the cloud with Autonomous Database on Oracle Cloud Free Tier or with Autonomous Database free container image for offline development.

JSON-centric AppDev

Develop apps quickly using a JSON document store that’s MongoDB-compatible but faster, more secure, and less expensive.

• Build JSON apps with high availability, dynamic scalability, and advanced security.
• Develop new apps using familiar MongoDB-compatible drivers, tools, and frameworks or migrate current MongoDB apps—all using Oracle Database API for MongoDB.
• Analyze your JSON data with scalable SQL, and access JSON from any relational tool or application.
• Build applications using both relational and JSON database paradigms at the same time. A single data store can be efficiently accessed and updated using both technologies. You can use JSON to easily retrieve, manipulate, and exchange information in your apps and relational techniques for query and analysis. Duality views increase performance and optimize storage, harnessing the best of both JSON and relational models.
• Tackle the hardest problems facing JSON database developers with ease, including multi-document ACID compliance, cross-collection joins, in-database procedural logic, and more.
• Enable analysts and data scientists to analyze data across the document store and relational store using SQL.

Cost reduction

Reduced TCO with automation

Automation reduces human labor costs and elastic scaling reduces licensing costs, with big benefits for total cost of operating enterprise applications. An IDC study of Autonomous Data Warehouse customers shows

• There’s an average five-year ROI of 417%, with breakeven on the investment occurring in an average of five months.
• Reducing management and licensing costs and user productivity lost to downtime enables organizations to lower their total cost of operations by an average of 63%.
• A flexible licensing model enables customers to cut their licensing costs by an average of 45%.
• The time needed to deploy a new database drops by an average of 84% and the staff time required falls by 85%.

Elastic, pay-per-use pricing

Spend less on licensing and cloud consumption and avoid overprovisioning by deploying on an elastic cloud database.

• Ensure usage and billing are aligned with actual application needs and consumption with elastic autoscaling. Compute and storage scale up and down independently in response to transient changes in workload, up to 3X base-provisioned resources, and with no downtime.
• Increase base-provisioned resources at any time in response to longer-term compute and storage needs.
• Access your data lake data up to 20X faster with the same pricing as object storage by storing all your data in Autonomous Database.
• Consolidate database instances into elastic resource pools that scale up and down without downtime, potentially providing compute cost savings of up to 87% versus paying for each instance individually.

Low-cost application development

Choose the right development environment option to accelerate your AppDev.

• Use Autonomous Database for Developers, a fixed-shape flat hourly rate option in Autonomous Database Serverless, for low-cost development and testing use cases. Get all the built-in tools and capabilities of Autonomous Database with a simple upgrade path to production deployments.
• Develop for free online with Oracle Autonomous Database on Oracle Free Tier or offline with Autonomous Database Free Container Image.

Management, security, and compliance

Automated database administration

Database administrators can move from manual administrative tasks to higher-value IT projects by taking advantage of automated management.

• Reduce time (PDF) spent on DBA-related tasks by an average of 68% and save up to 63% in operational costs.
• Rely on automation for all database management tasks: provisioning, monitoring, backups, auditing, alerting, disaster recovery, and more.
• Deliver better service levels with proactive database health monitoring and built-in fault tolerance. Patches and updates are applied automatically without downtime or human intervention.
• Improve application performance without manually investigating the workloads and data distribution. Automatic partitioning and automatic indexing tune the database for your workloads.

Data security

Autonomous Database helps keep all your data secure from unauthorized access by insiders, outsiders, and cyberattacks, including ransomware and malware.

• Frequent, automatic patching without downtime means that Autonomous Database is always up-to-date on security patches.
• Create a secure environment that will remain secure over time as conditions change. Use the included Oracle Data Safe to understand data sensitivity, evaluate data risks, mask sensitive data, implement and monitor security controls, assess user security, and monitor user activity.
• Protect against bad actors or malware with transparent data encryption. All data is always encrypted at rest, in motion, and when backed up.
• Prevent unauthorized users from accessing sensitive data, prevent unauthorized database changes, and address industry, regulatory, or corporate security standards with the included Oracle Database Vault.
• All users will see only appropriate data with advanced role-based access control, including redaction, masking, and filtering.

Compliance

Reduce the risks associated with operating enterprise applications.

• Frequent, automatic patching without downtime means that Autonomous Database is always up-to-date on security patches.
• Backups are fully automated, with optional long-term backups available for 10 years.
• Auditing is always enabled.
• Autonomous Database meets certified regulatory compliance standards, including Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), System and Organization Controls (SOC) 1, and SOC 2.
• Support a global user base with a fully automated Globally Distributed Autonomous Database that helps you meet data residency requirements, provide survivability for business-critical applications, and deliver cloud-scale database performance.

Mission-critical application support

High availability and business continuity

IT organizations can keep mission-critical applications running with less human involvement.

• Take advantage of 99.995% availability for Autonomous Database with Oracle Autonomous Data Guard (including planned and unplanned downtime). Maximize protection with multiple standby databases across multiple regions.
• Keep apps running with Application Continuity, which transparently recovers in-flight database transactions during outages.
• Avoid planned downtime with automated updates, backups, and patching that require no downtime and no human intervention.
• For less-critical apps, the default availability is 99.95%, and a lower-cost disaster recovery is available.

Mission-critical app deployments

Run and extend Oracle apps, such as PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel, or your custom or ISV apps for improved performance, availability, and security.

• Migrating apps is easy. Autonomous Database runs the same Oracle Database you’re accustomed to running on-premises.
• Accelerate performance—Autonomous Database is preconfigured with optimized storage, automatic indexing, and data caching.
• Rely on a proven, industry-leading platform for all types of transaction processing, including OLTP transactions, lightweight transactions, augmented transactions, and stream event processing.
• Industry-proven transparent scalability and availability are provided.
• The workload is monitored, and indexes are automatically created and maintained.
• Protect data without downtime. Your database deployment is secure by default and automatically kept up-to-date with the latest database and security patches.

Multicloud support

Open and complete multicloud support

• Use Oracle Database@Azure and run Autonomous Database in Microsoft Azure with OCI-level performance, security, and availability. Innovate with Autonomous Database and Microsoft services and build new cloud native apps using Azure services such as Azure Kubernetes and Azure OpenAI Service. Migrate your on-premises databases to the Autonomous Database service on Oracle Database@Azure using Oracle’s proven migration solutions.
• Accelerate innovation and supercharge database applications with Autonomous Database running natively in Google Cloud through Oracle Database@Google Cloud. Develop applications faster and gain deeper insights by combining Autonomous Database with Google Cloud capabilities, including GKE and Vertex AI, while leveraging a frictionless end-to-end experience across purchasing, operations, and collaborative support.
• Coming in 2025: Accelerate innovation and supercharge database applications with Autonomous Database on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure running on OCI in AWS. Gain deeper and faster insights by combining capabilities such as Amazon SageMaker and Oracle Database 23ai. Run your Oracle Database workloads while maintaining full feature and architecture compatibility, performance, and availability as on-premises environments and benefit from a frictionless end-to-end experience across purchasing, operations, and collaborative support.
• Get the data access, performance, and usability of a single cloud but in a multicloud environment.
• Get single-cloud ease of access to data using Autonomous Database, which securely integrates with Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage.
• Take advantage of native cloud services for DevOps, data integration, security and identity management, analytics, and more.