Tim Hall

Oracle released VirtualBox 7.2.14 a couple of days ago. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was expecting this release to coincide with the the normal quarterly patch cycle. The downloads and changelog are in the usual places. I’ve done installations on Windows 11 and Linux Mint and both worked fine. Vagrant I didn’t bother updating my Vagrant boxes for … Continue reading "Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.14"

The post Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.14 first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.14 was first posted on July 23, 2026 at 6:30 am.
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Oracle released VirtualBox 7.2.12 a couple of days ago. This comes hot on the heels of version 7.2.10, which I wrote about here. The downloads and changelog are in the usual places. I’ve done installations on Windows 11 and Linux Mint and both seem OK. As with the last version, on Windows 11 I got away with a straight upgrade, but … Continue reading "Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.12"

The post Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.12 first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.12 was first posted on July 2, 2026 at 10:39 am.
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After my recent posts on this subject I got some questions, and I thought I would use my responses to write a new post. I’m hoping this makes the situation more clear. I’ll link my other posts on this subject at the bottom, in case you want to look at them. Some of these topics … Continue reading "Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally : Some Clarification"

The post Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally : Some Clarification first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally : Some Clarification was first posted on June 19, 2026 at 7:32 am.
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Oracle released VirtualBox 7.2.10 a couple of days ago. The downloads and changelog are in the usual places. I’ve done installations on Windows 11 and Linux Mint and both went fine. On Windows 11 I got away with a straight upgrade this time, but it’s worth remembering the cleanest way to upgrade on Windows is to do the following. … Continue reading "Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.10"

The post Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.10 first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.10 was first posted on June 18, 2026 at 3:20 pm.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

I’ve posted on social media a few times about various open weight models released by Google. A recent post resulted in this question. “how to store and use an gemma 4 model from oracle database?” I gave this answer. “You would have to use the EmbeddingGemma model. Then programmatically generate the vector embeddings outside of … Continue reading "AI Vector Search : Generating vectors outside of the database using Ollama and EmbeddingGemma"

The post AI Vector Search : Generating vectors outside of the database using Ollama and EmbeddingGemma first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.AI Vector Search : Generating vectors outside of the database using Ollama and EmbeddingGemma was first posted on June 10, 2026 at 7:40 am.
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I’ve written a few posts about running local LLMs. Up until now I’ve been running them on my crappy old laptop. It’s a bit slow, but it works OK. The problem is it uses most of the local resources and I can’t do much else until the LLM finishes the task. My original plan was … Continue reading "Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally : My new inference machine"

The post Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally : My new inference machine first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally : My new inference machine was first posted on June 3, 2026 at 6:25 am.
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I’ve been reading and watching a lot of content about AI assisted development, and without fail the people who are getting the most out of it seem to be those where agile and DevOps development are already part of their culture. Some basic definitions Here are some basic definitions that will help with the discussion. … Continue reading "No Agile? No DevOps? Without them your AI assisted development will fail!"

The post No Agile? No DevOps? Without them your AI assisted development will fail! first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.No Agile? No DevOps? Without them your AI assisted development will fail! was first posted on May 18, 2026 at 7:31 am.
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Fedora 44 was released a few days ago. Let’s start with the standard warning. As usual I worked through a few variations of Oracle installations on Fedora, including 26ai. The only real gotcha was 21c, which required a downgrade of the binutils package to install. In comparison 19c and 26ai were cleaner. As explained in … Continue reading "Fedora 44 and Oracle"

The post Fedora 44 and Oracle first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Fedora 44 and Oracle was first posted on May 5, 2026 at 6:33 am.
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Oracle released VirtualBox 7.2.8 a few days ago. The downloads and changelog are in the usual places. I’ve done an install on a Windows 10 and 11. I had some issues with the previous version on Windows 11, but that was probably an issue with my machine. I tried this version on Windows 11 and it worked fine. As … Continue reading "Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.8"

The post Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.8 first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.8 was first posted on April 30, 2026 at 9:25 am.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

A few questions have popped up recently, so I thought I would address them here. I’ve already written about running local LLMs here. Both posts also include the reasons why you might want to do this. I’m not going to repeat that here. Can I run a local LLM on ??? This is the most … Continue reading "Running LLMs locally. One size does NOT fit all"

The post Running LLMs locally. One size does NOT fit all first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Running LLMs locally. One size does NOT fit all was first posted on April 15, 2026 at 9:59 am.
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A new version of Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) has been released. Version 26.1.0 comes with a bunch of bug fixes and new features (see here), but what is more interesting to me is at the bottom of the release notes. “Starting with ORDS 26.4 (planned for Winter 2026), Oracle REST Data Services will add … Continue reading "Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) 26.1.0 Released"

The post Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) 26.1.0 Released first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) 26.1.0 Released was first posted on April 13, 2026 at 7:58 am.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

Recently I was asked to create a database link between Oracle 19c and Snowflake. I’ve done similar links from Oracle to SQL Server and MySQL using ODBC, so I figured it would be simple. Along the way I hit a couple of snags, which I will point out here. Snowflake Credentials Using credentials to connect … Continue reading "Database Links from Oracle to Snowflake : How to fix a couple of problems…"

The post Database Links from Oracle to Snowflake : How to fix a couple of problems… first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Database Links from Oracle to Snowflake : How to fix a couple of problems… was first posted on March 25, 2026 at 10:26 am.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

You should start playing with new features as soon as you can, because it will take some time for you to start thinking about suitable uses for them. Things don’t just become part of your toolkit overnight. You’ve probably heard me say this over the years multiple times… Playing with assertions Over the weekend I … Continue reading "Third-Party Applications and Assertions in Oracle AI Database 26ai"

The post Third-Party Applications and Assertions in Oracle AI Database 26ai first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Third-Party Applications and Assertions in Oracle AI Database 26ai was first posted on February 23, 2026 at 10:25 am.
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Warning: A lot of the text in this post was generated by AI. The opinions/rants are mine. I know you think artificial intelligence (AI) will take over the world and subjugate or kill the human race, but the truth is way more boring. It will drown us in corporate bullshit. Local Setup The LLM Output … Continue reading "Artificial Intelligence (AI): The CEO BS Generator"

The post Artificial Intelligence (AI): The CEO BS Generator first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Artificial Intelligence (AI): The CEO BS Generator was first posted on February 20, 2026 at 9:45 am.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

I’ve mentioned several times about my backlog of 3+ year old posts that have been waiting for an on-prem release of 23c/23ai/26ai. Since the release of the on-prem version of Oracle AI Database 26ai I’ve been working through those posts, checking the content and updating the doc links. I think that process is now complete. … Continue reading "Oracle AI Database 26ai : Latest articles on my website"

The post Oracle AI Database 26ai : Latest articles on my website first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle AI Database 26ai : Latest articles on my website was first posted on February 16, 2026 at 3:42 pm.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

A few months ago I wrote a post about running Large Language Models (LLMs) locally using Ollama and Open WebUI. That works well, and feels very much like how you might want to run an LLM on a server in your organisation, but it’s not exactly friendly if you are not used to getting your … Continue reading "Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally using LM Studio"

The post Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally using LM Studio first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Running Large Language Models (LLMs) Locally using LM Studio was first posted on February 6, 2026 at 10:34 am.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

Oracle has released VirtualBox 7.2.6. The downloads and changelog are in the usual places. I’ve done an install on a Windows 10 and attempted one on a Windows 11 PC. As mentioned in my post about the previous release (here), the updates are not as straight forward as they used to be. In both cases I had to do … Continue reading "Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.6"

The post Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.6 first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.6 was first posted on January 30, 2026 at 2:04 pm.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

A couple of days ago Oracle released Oracle AI Database 26ai On-Prem for Linux x64. You can download it from here. This opens the floodgates for a bunch of articles I’ve been sitting on for over 3 years. First things first are the installations, so here goes. Installation Articles Here are the usual suspects. Vagrant … Continue reading "Oracle AI Database 26ai On-Prem Installations"

The post Oracle AI Database 26ai On-Prem Installations first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Oracle AI Database 26ai On-Prem Installations was first posted on January 30, 2026 at 9:16 am.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

I’ve got an old Intel MacBook Pro 15″, which was no longer getting operating system updates, so I decided to install Linux Mint 22.2 to keep it going for a while longer. I only use it for watching crap (YouTube, Prime Video, Netflix), so there was nothing on the laptop I cared about. Prep Work … Continue reading "Another Linux Mint Convert"

The post Another Linux Mint Convert first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.Another Linux Mint Convert was first posted on January 5, 2026 at 10:24 am.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com

The new My Oracle Support (MOS) portal has gone live, and it’s not been well received so far. I just want to mention a few things that are affecting me as a regular user of MOS, in the hope that someone will see them and fix them ASAP. Update from Oracle (12 Dec 2025) Oracle … Continue reading "My Oracle Support (MOS) Portal : What needs fixing?"

The post My Oracle Support (MOS) Portal : What needs fixing? first appeared on The ORACLE-BASE Blog.My Oracle Support (MOS) Portal : What needs fixing? was first posted on December 9, 2025 at 11:37 am.
©2024 "The ORACLE-BASE Blog". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at timseanhall@gmail.com