Oracle announces plans for Oracle Code Assist, an AI-powered code assistant, to help developers gain speed and improve code consistency. Powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and optimized for Java and SQL development, as well as applications on OCI, Oracle Code Assist is intended to provide developers with specific, contextualized suggestions that can be adapted to best practices and the codebase, all of an organization’s source code. Oracle Code Assist will also update, upgrade and refactor code written in most modern programming languages.
AI-powered software development has revolutionized the way software is conceptualized, created, tested, and managed. With AI-powered tools, developers can explore new ideas and receive intelligent suggestions for new code, upgraded code, or refactored code. Additionally, routine tasks can be automated, making AI tools an integral part of every stage of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Oracle Code Assist should be a perfect example; it aims to address each stage of the SDLC by providing code fragments, dependency analysis, error reduction solutions, test cases, annotations, summaries and documentation. Deployed as a development environment plug-in for JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA or Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Oracle Code Assist is programmed to be specially trained to provide informed feedback to help developers create, optimize, and update application level, regardless of where they are running.
“Developers will be able to use Oracle Code Assist to quickly upgrade entire Java applications to newer versions. This ability to quickly upgrade Java using a coding wizard significantly increases enterprises’ ability to improve application resiliency and performance, integrate the latest JDK features, and strengthen their security posture,” said Arnal Dayaratna, IDC vice president of research. “Oracle Code Assist can also accelerate database upgrades when it comes to refactoring and testing complex and often custom PL/SQL code, which can be very time consuming and expensive. Given the ubiquity of Java and databases in businesses, Oracle Code Assist is likely to be widely adopted by large enterprises around the world. »
Oracle is the architect and principal developer of the Java platform, and a pioneer of the relational database. Oracle Code Assist is trained on a large repository of software developed over many years of application and software development. By refining Oracle’s OCI service APIs, coding models, and software development best practices from Java, SQL, OCI, and others, such as NetSuite’s SuiteScript, Oracle Code Assist should be ideally equipped to serve businesses, regardless of where their software and applications are deployed.
“Custom applications are the way every business differentiates itself on a global scale, but creating, deploying and maintaining applications takes a lot of time and work,” says Aanand Krishnan, vice president, product management, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Enterprises that leverage Oracle Code Assist can help developers increase speed and code consistency to improve long-term application maintenance in a secure, rigorous, and compliant manner.” »
Developers will gain speed with the following Oracle Code Assist features:
Code generation: Provides code suggestions based on context and learned patterns and generates class files, methods, or entire lines of code. Developers can then accept, modify, or reject the code snippet, reducing time spent writing boilerplate code and building applications faster.
Code annotation: Generates documentation or application programming interface (API) comments to describe code functionality. This helps developers maintain the application throughout its life.
Code Explainability: Provides a plain language summary of the code. This helps developers responsible for reviewing or refactoring existing code and saves time by providing accurate, easy-to-understand context.
Faster code reviews: Initiates a pull request to merge changes into a repository after writing code reviews, and recommends code changes based on performance, quality, efficiency, and style guidelines. This helps developers deliver higher quality code.
Test coverage generation: Creates unit and functional tests based on the context of the code. This helps developers improve test quality with better test coverage covering a wider variety of test inputs.
Where Oracle Code Assist is also expected is in helping developers improve code consistency and optimization through:
Custom Suggestions: Integrate a company’s industry-specific coding frameworks, internal libraries, best practices, and standards to generate code that’s unique to a company. This helps developers review, update, and integrate code into existing codebases.
Code Origin Context: Filters the code it generates to ensure it does not come from unauthorized licenses. This helps developers manage compliance risks.
Automated language upgrades: Converts and updates existing code to the current language version using newer libraries. Developers can thus improve the performance and quality of an application by taking advantage of new features of the language or structure used.
Code analysis: Identifies bugs and inefficiencies, and produces code based on a company’s software development practices. This helps developers deliver more rigorous code that is consistent with their proprietary code base.
OCI Optimization Suggestions: Integrates suggestions from OCI service APIs, coding patterns, and best practices to help applications perform best on OCI. Developers can thus optimize the utility and increase the efficiency of applications running on OCI and using OCI services.
Developers working at Oracle actively use Oracle Code Assist today to create new Oracle products and services. There are plans to make it available to Oracle customers soon.
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