Oracle recently announced the general availability of the Oracle Globally Distributed Autonomous Database. This fully managed Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) service is available in data centers around the world. Built-in, cutting-edge capabilities redefine how enterprises manage and process distributed data to achieve the highest possible levels of scalability and availability and provide data sovereignty features. And, with Autonomous Database’s automated management and ease of use you don’t need to have an extensive staff of experts to take advantage of the power of a distributed database.

The Oracle Globally Distributed Autonomous Database simplifies the deployment and management of distributed databases. It provides transparent access for applications using these databases by automatically placing data in the appropriate location. The addition of distributed database capabilities on top of the proven SQL capabilities of Oracle Database enables customers to immediately benefit from decades of innovation in performance optimization, RAC parallel clusters, converged database architecture, and security.

Why Use Oracle’s Globally Distributed Autonomous Database

Oracle Globally Distributed Autonomous Database is designed to address global enterprises’ needs for high levels of performance and availability, and data sovereignty. It makes it easier for organizations to run critical distributed databases that use all types of data with high performance and availability. It  is ideal for a wide range of applications including payment processing, credit card fraud detection, personalized marketing, mobile messaging, internet infrastructure, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Here’s some of the key capabilities –

High Availability: Oracle’s Globally Distributed Autonomous Database splits a single logical database into multiple physical databases (called shards) that are distributed across multiple data centers, availability domains, or regions. Faults in one shard do not affect others, enhancing overall availability. Automatic replication of shards across domains or regions provides protection from outages. The Oracle Globally Distributed Autonomous Database runs on fault-tolerant Exadata infrastructure for the highest possible availability.

Horizontal Scalability: Organizations can scale Globally Distributed Autonomous Database horizontally by adding servers and their associated database shards online and without interrupting database operations. Data and accesses are automatically redistributed to maintain a consistently balanced workload. The database infrastructure scales from multi-terabyte to multi-petabyte levels, addressing the requirements of the most demanding applications. In addition, each Globally Distributed Autonomous Database shard runs on an Exadata platform in OCI, providing high levels of vertically scaled performance that can automatically increase to meet local demand or scaled down to help reduce costs.

Data Sovereignty: Organizations can specify where data is stored using a choice of customer-defined data placement policies. Updates are automatically inserted into database shards in the correct location based on these policies.

Choice of Data Distribution Methods: Globally Distributed Autonomous Database offers extensive control over how data is distributed across shards. Unlike other databases with limited methods, we support value-based, system-managed consistent hash, user-defined, duplicated, and partitioned distribution within shards, as well as allowing flexible combinations.

Autonomous Management: This service brings the advanced, ML-driven capabilities of Autonomous Database to distributed databases with automatic database patching, security, tuning, and performance scaling within shards. The service combines vertical and horizontal scalability to achieve optimum levels on demand.

AI: Autonomous Database Select AI is also supported, letting users access their distributed databases using LLM-enabled natural language queries without having to know how data is structured or where it is located.

Simple Application Development: The Globally Distributed Autonomous Database offers a unified logical database view to applications. Its cloud-native capabilities and support for Oracle Database’ rich feature set provide the ideal platform for modern applications. Automated and transparent data distribution and access simplify the development of distributed applications.

Oracle Globally Distributed Autonomous Database can help you:

• Achieve hyperscale performance for transaction processing and mixed workloads
• Address data sovereignty requirements for distributed data warehousing and data lakes
• Deploy concurrent data pipelines and machine learning analytics.
• Provide maximum availability for mission-critical applications.
• Build cloud-native, scalable applications.