Oracle debuts AI coding assistant in new release

Oracle has recently unveiled a groundbreaking new tool for developers – Oracle Code Assist. This AI-powered coding assistant offers context-specific suggestions that can be customized to align with an organization’s best practices and codebases.

While an official availability date has not been provided, developers at Oracle have already been using Oracle Code Assist to create innovative products and services. The tool supports writing, upgrading, and refactoring code in various modern programming languages, making it a versatile solution for developers.

Powered by large language models running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Oracle Code Assist is particularly optimized for Java, SQL, and general application development on OCI. It also extends its support to Ruby and C++, with plans for compatibility with Python, Terraform, and Netsuite SuiteScript in the near future.

Oracle Code Assist streamlines various stages of the software development process by providing code snippets, dependency analysis, error mitigation alternatives, test cases, annotations, summarizations, and documentation. The tool can be seamlessly integrated as a plugin for popular IDEs like JetBrains IntelliJ Idea and Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code, offering expert feedback to aid developers in building, enhancing, and optimizing applications.

Trained on a repository of software spanning several years, Oracle Code Assist is positioned to cater to organizations regardless of where their applications are deployed. The tool is continually refined with OCI service APIs, coding patterns, and Oracle software development practices, ensuring comprehensive support across different technologies.

With features like code generation, annotation, API documentation, and explainability, Oracle Code Assist enhances developer productivity and code quality. The tool simplifies code reviews, generates test coverage, and facilitates the creation of unit and functional tests based on code context, thereby improving overall test quality.

Oracle has highlighted five key benefits of Oracle Code Assist for developers:

• Tailored suggestions based on code frameworks, internal libraries, best practices, and industry standards for organization-specific code generation.
• Contextual code origination to ensure compliance with licensing requirements.
• Automated language upgrades for updating existing code to current standards.
• Code analysis to identify bugs and inefficiencies.
• OCI optimization recommendations for applications to run smoothly on OCI.