Introduction

Welcome to Oracle Database 12c Release 2 New Features! We’re excited about this book, and very excited about how much Oracle Database 12c Release 2 expands the extremely cool features introduced in Oracle Database 12c Release 1. If you have picked up this book, then we have little doubt that you are also excited about the enhancements included in Oracle Database 12c Release 2.

There’s something else worthy of mention here in the introduction. While we wrote the initial chapters of this book using pre-release versions of Oracle Database 12c Release 2, the final version of this book was tested on the real deal. The results you see in the code throughout this book are from the production database release. We’ve always done the books in this series that way, because we understand that it’s important. In the past, we’ve seen many things change between pre-release versions and the production release, and we’ve read other books that were clearly written with pre-release code that didn’t work in the production release. You won’t find any of that here. As a result of this approach, our book took a bit longer to get to press, but we think it’s worth the extra time, and we hope you do too.

If you find that you like this book, please go to your favorite online place to buy books and leave a kind comment. Five-star reviews are always welcome! If you have feedback for us, please send an e-mail to [email protected] with your thoughts and comments or ping Bob on Twitter: @rjbdba. We always look to improve our books, and if you find an error, we want to correct it. Enjoy this book—it’s short and sweet but jam-packed with great examples of the best new features in Oracle Database 12c Release 2—rock on!