Oracle Database 26ai: Exploring Hidden Gems from 19c to 26ai

As we step into 2026, there's still a lot of excitement about Oracle 26ai on-premise, which is set to be released on January 20th, 2026. Like many DBAs, I'm looking forward to testing it. While preparing for this, I was keen to look at the new features in Data Guard for 26ai and also wanted to revisit features from 19c, 21c, and 23ai that I've liked and wanted to talk about for a long time.

Why am I doing this? Well, any of you who have met me know that I'm very passionate about DR! I firmly believe that any business or organisation without a robust DR strategy and sound security framework is setting itself up to fail. So I started looking specifically at features related to Data Guard, Recovery, and database Security. This led me down a rabbit hole, where every parameter and feature I looked at seemed like an interesting topic to present. Then it struck me, why not talk about all of them here on the blog as I work my way through 26ai?

Over a series of posts, I'll share my take on these features and how they work. Below are a few of the topics I'll likely be covering:

1. Attention Log

2. Automatic Transaction Quarantine

3. Prepare your Database for Data Guard

4. Enhanced Validate Command

5. Hybrid Cloud TDE (I can't leave this out I've spoken enough on this topic, but there's always more to say)

6. Enhanced Monitoring Views

7. DBMS_DG

   
   

I'm excited to dive into these and share what I've learned along the way.

If there is something you’ve discovered or have questions about, please connect with me. I’m always interested to hear others experiences and assist where I can.