http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E16655_01/server.121/e17906/chapter1.htm#NEWFTCH1
Note that I have highlighted in red those item that were of particular interest to me:
1.1.1.17 Web Services Support (Oracle Application Express)
- "Creating a PL/SQL API to interact with Web services"
- "Exposing report regions, DML processes as Representational State Transfer (REST) Web services."
- "Support of binary data types in Web services support"
- "Allow the inclusion of custom Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) headers with Web Services Description Language (WSDL) based Web services"
- "Support of SOAP 1.2 in wizard-based Web services support."
1.1.4.3 Enhanced Oracle Native LEFT OUTER JOIN syntax
- "...In Oracle Database 12c, the native syntax for a
LEFT OUTER JOINhas been expanded to allow multiple tables on the left hand side...Merging of such views allows more join reordering and, therefore, more optimal execution plans"
1.1.4.4 JDBC Support for PL/SQL Data Types as Parameters
- "The ability for Java and JDBC applications to bind PL/SQL package types and boolean types as parameters"
1.1.4.11 PL/SQL Functions Defined in the SQL WITH Clause
- "You can define a PL/SQL function in the
WITHclause of a subquery and use it as an ordinary function"
1.1.4.15 Temporal Validity
- "...you can add one or more valid time dimensions to a table using existing columns, or using columns automatically created by the database"
- "Flashback Query has been extended to support queries on Temporal Validity dimensions. Users can now execute queries with the
AS OFandVERSIONS BETWEENclauses based on one or more valid time periods on the underlying tables"
1.1.6.3 IDENTITY Columns
- "Table columns have been enhanced to support the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) SQL keyword
IDENTITY"
1.1.6.4 Increased Size Limit for VARCHAR2, NVARCHAR2, and RAW Data Types
- "The maximum size of the
VARCHAR2, NVARCHAR2,andRAWdata types has been increased from 4,000 to 32,767 bytes."
1.1.6.7 Native SQL Support for Query Limits and Row Offsets
- "The
FETCH FIRSTandOFFSETclauses provides native SQL language support to limit the number of rows returned and to specify a starting row for the return set."
1.1.7.1 Microsoft .NET Framework 4 and 4.5 Support
- "Oracle Data Provider for .NET supports .NET Framework 4 and 4.5, including Client Profile"
1.1.8.2 Database Support for JDK Upgrade
- "New support in this release allows a customer to upgrade...from JDK 1.6 to JDK 1.7 and conversely downgrade from JDK 1.7 to JDK 1.6"
1.1.8.6 JDBC Support for Database Resident Connection Pool
- "This feature allows large scale deployment of Java applications (typically hundreds or thousands of middle tier connecting to the same database). Orders of magnitude reductions of database server processes and memory are seen with this new feature"
1.2.1.1 Decision Tree Mining Text Data
1.2.1.2 Expected Maximization (EM) Clustering and Density Estimation
1.2.1.3 Feature Extraction Using Singular Value Decomposition
1.2.1.4 Feature Selection and Creation for Generalized Linear Models (GLM)
1.2.1.5 Native Double in Data Mining Functions
1.2.1.6 Native SQL Support for Row Pattern Matching
1.2.1.7 Native Text Support
1.2.1.8 On-the-Fly Models
1.2.1.9 Prediction Details and Cluster Functions
1.3.4.3 SecureFiles is the Default for the LOB Storage
- "In this release, SecureFiles is now the default for LOB storage when the compatible initialization parameter is set to 12.1 or higher."
1.4.1.3 Multitenant Architecture
- "The multitenant architecture is new in Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1). You can have many PDBs inside a single Oracle Database occurrence. PDBs are fully backwards compatible with an ordinary pre-12.1 database."
- Benefits:
- " Fast provisioning of a new database or of a copy of an existing database."
-
"Fast redeployment, by unplug and plug, of an existing database to a new platform."
-
"Quickly patch or upgrade the Oracle Database version for many databases and for the cost of doing it once."
-
"Patch or upgrade by unplugging a PDB and plugging it into a different CDB in a later version."
-
"A machine can run more database instances in the form of PDBs than as individual, monolithic databases."
- "Global Data Services (GDS) is a new capability of Oracle Database that extends the concept of services, which are only available in Oracle RAC, to a globally replicated configuration involving a combination of Oracle RAC, Active Data Guard, and Oracle GoldenGate. This allows services to be deployed anywhere within this globally replicated configuration, supporting load balancing, high availability, database affinity, and so on.
- "Customers who have utilized the concept of services for Oracle RAC can now extend the same benefits of automatic workload management to their Active Data Guard or Oracle GoldenGate configurations. Similarly, single-instance Active Data Guard or Oracle GoldenGate customers can now fully utilize the benefits of services and automatic workload management for their replicated configurations."
1.5.4.1 Oracle ASM Disk Scrubbing
- "Oracle ASM disk scrubbing is a new feature that checks logical data corruptions and repairs them automatically in normal and high redundancy disk groups. This feature is designed so that it does not have any impact on normal I/O in production systems. The scrubbing process repairs logical corruptions using the mirror disks. Disk scrubbing leverages the Oracle ASM rebalancing to minimize I/O overhead."
1.11.3.1 Enhanced ANYDATA Support
- "Restrictions have been removed from the
ANYDATAimplementation that prevented its use with Abstract Data Types (ADT) that contained attributes whose data type wasLOBorXMLType. This enhancement increases the flexibility of the OracleANYDATAimplementation and it can now be used with database editions."
- "...adds support for W3C DOM Level 3 Core API's and reduces the memory footprint associated with using XML schemas."
"...extends Oracle's support for the W3C XQuery specification by adding support for the XQuery full text extension. This enables customers to perform XML-aware full text searches on XML content stored in the database."
1.11.3.11 Support for XQuery Update
- "...allowing users to perform fragment and node-level updates using the W3C standard query language."
