6 posts tagged with "oracle database"

There a few reasons why we would want to perform "generative AI" tasks, such as generating embeddings, summary, and text, using local resources, rather than relying on external, third-party providers. Perhaps the most important ones are data privacy, costs, and the convenience of choosing what large language models (LLMs) to use. About four months ago, I wrote that with the Oracle Database 23ai 23.5.0.24.06 release on the Oracle Autonomous Database (ADB), it was possible to create the credentials to access these third-party LLMs through their REST APIs. Fast-forward, my ADB now has the upgraded version 23.6.0.24.10 that has support for "local" third-party REST providers, specifically, Ollama. In this article, I will demonstrate how you can utilise other Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) managed resources to quickly get started.

In my previous blog post on Get Started with Oracle Database 23ai AI Vector Search, I mentioned that it was not yet possible to use third-party REST APIs to perform tasks like generating embeddings and text.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Next up is text generation but there is currently an issue that prohibits the adding of credentials required to work with third-party REST APIs using the DBMS_VECTOR and DBMS_VECTOR_CHAIN packages on the ADB. Hopefully, this will be fixed very soon.

I am happy to post that with the latest 23.5.0.24.06 database release update, this is no longer an issue!

While preparing for my upcoming Kscope24 presentations, I thought I'd introduce a section on Oracle's recently announced AI Vector Search that is now generally available with the Oracle Database 23ai rebranding and release. At the time of writing, you can either provision the new version of the database on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), download the Oracle Autonomous Database (ADB) Free container image, or the Oracle Database 23ai Free. On the OCI, you can either provision an Always Free ADB, or an Oracle Base Database service instance.

The documentation provided by Oracle is comprehensive and should get you started. Here, I condensed everything that I have learned so far into a step-by-step guide to get you started quickly.

Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is a powerful database feature that allows developers and administrators to very quickly, persist data encrypted at-rest. Applications do not require explicit coding to encrypt data for storage. TDE manages encryption during storage, and decryption when data is read, transparently and automatically.

TDE can also be used during backups. In the typical "tape falls off the back of the truck" scenario, malicious actors would not be able to decipher the data on the lost tapes without the crucial encryption key stored in the Oracle Wallet. Assuming of course, the wallet was not backed up to the same tape.

This enterprise-grade feature is found in the Oracle Advanced Security Database Option. That requires user to be licensed for database enterprise edition. However, with Oracle Database 18c Express Edition (18cXE), Oracle has made it free and accessible by everyone!

This post was specially written for Oracle Application Express (APEX) developers who are new to this technology. It provides a simple workflow for creating an encrypted tablespaces. Since APEX application live on the database, placing the parsing schema on a TDE-enabled tablespace, automatically protects the entire application. Hopefully this will encourage you to use it for protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or any other sensitive and confidential data.

Updated November 17, 2018 Please read this follow-up post as well. It contains an important note about intermediate certificates and where to download the root certificates.

One of the difficulties working with web services in the previous version of Oracle Database Express Edition (XE) was the lack of a usable Oracle Wallet. This was fast becoming a huge problems for developers, as many API providers started enforcing requirements to that clients accessed services through secured channels. When working with 11g XE, I often relied on proxies within a sandbox to mask the need for SSL/TLS. I discussed this somewhat at length in a previous blog post.

With the 18c release, Oracle has opened up and provided us developers the opportunities to make our apps safer. We now have access to the (orapki) tools needed to manage an Oracle Wallet. I don't do this a lot, so I keep a snippets of what I do to make this easy.

What a prelude to Oracle OpenWorld 2018 (OOW18)! ICYMI, the next-generation Oracle Database 18c Express Edition (18cXE) was released late last week. The database software comes with a bunch of free enterprise features and options that usually come with a hefty price tag. Among them, Oracle Advanced Analytics, Oracle Advanced Security and Oracle RDF Semantic Graph are my favourites! See the Features Availability for more details on the Oracle great giveaway!

Since Saturday, I have been kept busy working on getting the development environment ready for Fabe. It was just weeks ago since we had the environment up and running on 11gXE. The instance is fully driven on the back of Docker that made it easier to swap out the database.