My friend told me today that Oracle 12.2 is available on the cloud on the following link: https://cloud.oracle.com/database
I checked that link. The following database cloud services can be seen on that page:
1. Oracle Database Cloud Service
2. Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service
3. Oracle Database Exadata Express Cloud Service - Managed
4. Oracle Database Schema Cloud Service - Managed
I expanded all of these one by one and then clicked on the "Features" link. I found that all of these services were mentioning "Oracle Database 11g or 12c" except for the Exadata Express Service which mentioned "Oracle Database 12 c Release 2 Enterprise Edition plus options running on Exadata." The scheme service of course was not on 12c and only mentions "Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition running on Exadata."
I started to wonder about the 12.2 bit. I asked my friend:
"Release 2 of 12c is only mentioned in the features list of "Oracle Database Exadata Express Cloud Service" on this link. What about the other Exadata service and the other Database service, it just says 12c. Are those 12c Release 1 or 12c Release 2?
"Also, if 12.2 is now available for use, where is the 12.2 documentation - we only see 12.1 on docs.oracle.com in the Database section. Will 12.2 documentation be released even if on-premise 12.2 is not released?"
Two of my Oracle friends responded (publicly on LinkedIn). One of them said:
"DB12R2 start to be available on Exadata Express Cloud Services ... availability on other services will come soon in next weeks ..."
The other friend said:
Oracle Database 12.2 New Features Documentation can now be found on:
https://docs.oracle.com/cloud/latest/exadataexpress-cloud/CSDBF/oracle-database-12-2-new-features.htm#CSDBF-GUID-D0673E3E-DF05-47C3-B1E2-BEF91FA36CEF
Thanks friends, that's helpful. Good to see some official new features documentation, even if it's in a different place on docs.oracle.com - under cloud and not under database.