Last week, Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle AI Database 26ai Enterprise Edition for Linux x86‑64, but 13-year support for 19c and the prospect of AI lock-in might make users think twice about upgrading to it.
Oracle started life as a database company and — despite the avalanche of news around its cloud and AI initiatives — it still is one, hanging on to the number one spot in the DB-Engines ranking system at least. Among developers, though, PostgreSQL is the most popular database, according to Stack Overflow.
In 2024, Oracle launched its Database 23ai, dropping the “c” suffix it established for cloud in 2013. But the release never arrived as a general on-premises option beyond Oracle’s own engineered systems, and the company later pushed back the Premier Support cutoff for 19c to December 31, 2029, with Extended Support running through December 31, 2032. Premier support was originally slated to end in 2024.
Oracle divides its databases into “long-term” releases and “innovation” releases with the former getting a longer support period. Database 23ai was positioned as a long-term release, but did not make it to broadly deployable on-prem platforms. Now, the company said Oracle 26ai is generally available on-prem on Linux x86‑64, but it is unclear when it will launch on other operating systems such as Windows.
Database 26ai adds AI Vector Search alongside Oracle’s pitch for a globally distributed database, with support for JSON Relational Duality and the Apache Iceberg table format, the company said. It also introduces tooling for building, deploying, and managing AI agents that operate on private data, part of Oracle’s broader AI agent push. However, given the extension of support timelines for 19c, it is difficult to understand when Oracle plans its long-term database release to be for all platforms, said Martin Biggs, vice president and general manager of third-party support specialist Spinnaker.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that Oracle has now put its release and support schedules behind the much-criticized new support portal, which left users fuming after it launched late last year.
Normally, users get eight years of support on a long-term release: five of Premier and three Extended. However, for 19c it will be 13 years, as things stand. Meanwhile, 26ai is slated to see Premier Support ending in 2031, while presumably, extended support will be available for another three years, but this has not been announced.
Despite the features supporting AI in the latest release, many users were happy with 19c because of the extended exit runway, Biggs said.
“They’re not looking at anything soon. Vendor application requires a database, and so that database will typically fully support Oracle 19c, and that’s going to be the case for six years. It’s a pretty stable platform, and people seem pretty happy,” he said.
Such is the timeline, users can consider migrating to a new application or entirely new database, such as PostgreSQL, Biggs said.
Meanwhile, users should be wary of being locked into Oracle’s plans for AI through their database choice, said Mark Smith, CEO of third-party support specialist Support Revolution.
“Database 26ai is optimized for Oracle engineered systems and we expect the associated costs will increase once customers are locked into the model and their systems are sized for the AI processing throughput. Running the AI content on-premise outside of Oracle kit will almost certainly see an increase in resources needed and a revaluation of machine capabilities and required license metrics,” he said.
Oracle has been offered the opportunity to comment, but had not responded by press time. ®