Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: Key Updates from July 15 – August 15, 2025

 


Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has had a busy month, rolling out powerful new features and updates across Autonomous Database, Generative AI, Big Data, Kubernetes, and more. Whether you’re a database administrator, developer, data scientist, or IT operations leader, these enhancements unlock new levels of efficiency, intelligence, and scalability.

Let’s dive into the highlights.

1. Autonomous Database Serverless: Smarter Data Access & Automation

  • Table Hyperlink Groups – Access data from multiple objects or SQL queries through a single URL, simplifying multi-source data retrieval.

  • ProxySQL for Elastic Pools – Route queries efficiently across multiple Autonomous Databases without consolidating data physically. 

  • Data Studio Enhancements –

    • Jobs Feature: Automate tasks like data loading, AI-powered augmentation, PL/SQL routines, and API integrations.

    • BICC Support: Load Business Intelligence Cloud Connector data into Autonomous DB with ease.

    • Bulk Edit Wizard: Edit multiple columns in mappings simultaneously with find/replace, prefix/suffix, and inclusion/exclusion options.

    • Table AI Assistant Upgrades: Conversational AI for querying and analyzing your database in natural language. 

  • Select AI Expansion – Now supports AWS and OpenAI-compatible AI providers.

  • New Diagnostic View – Use V$CLIENT_ERRORS to query alert log-related errors.

2. Generative AI: More Models, More Regions, More Power

  • New Models in Hyderabad – Includes Cohere Command A, Meta Llama 4 Maverick/Scout, Meta Llama 3.3 (70B), and new Cohere Embed models.

  • Expansion to Phoenix & Ashburn – Generative AI now available in more US regions.

  • xAI Grok 4 Support – Advanced reasoning, tool use, and enterprise-ready capabilities.

  • Generative AI Agents Upgrades –

    • API endpoint calling tool.

    • Agent orchestration.

    • Bring-your-own HeatWave MySQL embeddings to RAG.

    • JSON, HTML, and Markdown ingestion support.

3. Big Data Service: Better Updates, More Control

  • ODH Patch 2.0.10.48 – Consolidated updates and bug fixes with minimal downtime options.

  • Version 3.1.1 Enhancements –

    • Automated update notifications.

    • Capacity reporting API.

    • New security controls and logging improvements.

    • Component upgrades (Spark JDBC, Avro, Zookeeper, OCI HDFS Connector).


4. Fleet Application Management: Real-Time Automation

  • Dynamic fleet updates when resources change.

  • Non-blocking workflows that log errors but keep processes moving.

  • Comprehensive fleet metrics for better decision-making.

  • Recommended action insights directly in the console.


5. Database Management: Broader Coverage

  • Now supports Autonomous Databases on Exadata Cloud@Customer with Diagnostics & Management.

  • Management Agent support for ExaDB-XS.

  • Discover & monitor entire Oracle Cloud Database Systems — including clusters, ASM, and listeners.


6. HeatWave: Latest MySQL Versions

  • Now supports MySQL 9.4.0 (Innovation), 8.4.6 (LTS), and 8.0.43 (Bugfix).

  • New features include NL2ML for natural language ML, enhanced Lakehouse capabilities, and CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE syntax.


7. Data Science: More Flexible Deployment

  • Burstable VMs for jobs, notebooks, and pipelines — cost-efficient with the ability to burst during peak workloads.

  • Multimodel Serving – Serve multiple ML models from a single endpoint.


8. Kubernetes & Networking Enhancements

  • Support for Kubernetes 1.31.10 with upgrade recommendations before September 1, 2025.

  • VCN-Native Pod Networking CNI v2.3.0 — better update control, reliability fixes, and admission policy improvements.


9. Application & Developer Services

  • API Gateway – Now supports resource locking for gateways, deployments, certificates, and more.

  • Email Delivery – Send raw emails via HTTPS for richer marketing and transactional communications.


10. Platform & OS Updates

  • Autonomous Linux 9 – UEK 8 is now the default and required kernel.

  • Speech Services – Text-to-Speech now supports 9 languages, plus Whisper model improvements like custom prompting and auto language detection.

  • Document Understanding – Now supports Label Studio for enhanced data labeling workflows.


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