Blog Posts

Priority Transactions: Letting the Database Roll Back Its Own Blockers in Oracle AI Database 26ai

August 22, 2026

A hung transaction used to mean tracking down the blocker and killing the session by hand. In Oracle AI Database 26ai the database can roll back a lower-priority blocker automatically, and I walk through how to set it up and where it can bite you.
Automatic Transaction Quarantine in Oracle AI Database 26ai: When One Bad Transaction Won’t Take Down the Whole Database

August 18, 2026

One transaction failing to recover used to mean the whole database could go down until Oracle Support helped you skip past it. In Oracle AI Database 26ai, SMON quarantines that one transaction instead, and I walk through monitoring and resolving it.
Oracle AI Database 26ai Is a Patch, Not an Upgrade: Reading the New Version Numbers

August 12, 2026

I was asked to scope a 26ai upgrade project the way we scoped our last major version move. Turns out if you are already on 23ai, it is just a quarterly patch, and I walk through the new version numbering that explains why.
WAIT and NOWAIT: Giving Every DML Statement a Lock Timeout

August 8, 2026

Who this is for: anyone who has run a one-off UPDATE, gotten pulled away before committing it, and come back to find three other sessions queued up behind a lock nobody could tell how long to wait for. A teammate was fixing a bad row in production last summer, a quick UPDATE to correct a…
Small Oracle 23ai Syntax Wins That Saved Me Real Time

August 4, 2026

A spreadsheet seed job and a rounding check on the same Friday showed me how much small Oracle 23ai syntax has quietly improved. Here is what multi-row inserts and select without from actually save, and where they still need care.