Oracle 26ai – Standard Edition 2 – the hidden secret of RU 23.26.3

Without any special announcement, Oracle released the Standard Edition 2 of the Oracle AI Database 26ai with the Release Update of July 2026.

If you want to install the SE2 edition of Oracle 26ai, you must download the “Goldimage” of the “23.26.3.0.0 Database Release Update” (Patch 39581612 ). This image contains the most current patches and offers you to install the SE2 as an option. Either as an option in the graphical installer or via the option “installEdition=SE” in the response file.

Installing the software and creating a database leads to

oracle@kiwi:~/ [AISE2] sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 23.26.3.0.0 - Production on Wed Aug 12 23:06:53 2026
Version 23.26.3.0.0
Copyright (c) 1982, 2026, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle AI Database 26ai Standard Edition 2 Release 23.26.3.0.0 - Production

However, there are issues with the modern multi-die-processors and the SE2 of the Oracle Database (not only 26ai, but 19c, too). Please see the blog post “The socket trap” (by Johannes Ahrends, in German) for more details.