Oracle Database 12c includes over 500 new features designed to support cloud computing, big data, security, and availability. Key features include support for up to 4096 pluggable databases, hot cloning without placing the source database in read-only mode, sharding capabilities, in-memory column storage, application containers, improved resource management isolation, and AWR support on Active Data Guard databases. Other notable features include enhanced JSON support, data redaction for security, row limits and offsets for queries, invisible columns, SQL text expansion, PL/SQL from SQL, session-level sequences, extended data types up to 32K, multiple indexes on the same columns, READ privileges without row locking ability, session private statistics for global temporary tables,