Part I In this episode of the Oracle Academy Tech Chat Podcast we explore how Oracle's latest AI-driven database tools are revolutionizing teaching and learning in higher education. Tailored for global faculty and students, the episode demonstrates how artificial intelligence makes database operations more accessible, intuitive, and relevant to real-world applications. Faculty will discover strategies to integrate AI-powered tools into their curriculum, using features like natural language processing database queries, schema analysis, and automated health checks—all in simple language, not complex SQL. Students will see live demonstrations where database tasks are executed through everyday commands, bridging the gap between AI and hands-on expertise needed for today's tech landscape. Key highlights include an introduction to the MCP server, insights into OCI Generative AI integration with databases, and step-by-step interactive demos ideal for classroom and research settings. This podcast is a must-listen for educators seeking innovative approaches, students aiming to build in-demand skills, and academic leaders looking to advance curriculum and research with the latest in AI technology.

------------------------------------------------------------

Episode Transcript:

00;00;09;02 - 00;00;38;13

Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies, and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders of the future. Let's get started. Hello everyone! My name is Danny Tomic and I will be your host for today's webcast. Revolutionized learning with AI driven database tools.

00;00;38;16 - 00;01;14;23

I'm pleased to welcome our featured speaker, Pankaj Tewari, a seasoned software development professional with over 12 years of experience and a master of science in AI and Machine Learning from Liverpool John Moores University. We're excited to bring together faculty and students from around the world to explore the very latest in database technology and artificial intelligence. Today, you'll discover how Oracle's innovative solutions are making database operations more accessible and impactful for teaching, learning and research.

00;01;14;26 - 00;01;26;24

Today's webcast will introduce you to the Model Context Protocol server and show how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is.

00;01;26;26 - 00;01;47;22

Narrative AI with database operations through natural language. If you have any questions, please ask them in the Q&A tool. We will hold them until the end and try to get through as many as possible. This session will be recorded and distributed at the end of the presentation. For those that were not able to attend here live. Thank you all for joining us today.

00;01;47;25 - 00;01;55;10

Let's get started. Without further ado, I turn you over to Pankaj Tiwari.

00;01;55;12 - 00;02;23;25

Hi, my name is Pankaj and I'm part of Rakel Cloud Action Development team. I'm here to talk about, like, The topic is transformation of database operations using Amqp seven OCI identity in action. So. And I will not delay further I'll just move ahead with the next slide before starting directly to the like, going directly to the topic, I just wanted to know, like, I mean, maybe there are people who may not be, knowing about, like, what is MCB?

00;02;23;27 - 00;02;43;24

So I'll just give a small brief. Like, what is MCP? So MCP is nothing, as anybody might be aware. It is like a model context protocol. So model is something like the NLM, Gemini Cloud. Whatever the model you wanted to use the context, the context which we provide to the model and the protocol, whether it's Http, IO or Http.

00;02;44;00 - 00;03;10;17

So these are the things to which the combination is MCP. So what it basically does it it basically offers a documented standardized way for a computer program to integrate from external sources. What I can just say is like, you might be building some, cloud services, you might be building some of the stuff in the real time applications, and there are customers who are going to use your services, right, that you can see.

00;03;10;17 - 00;03;36;14

Right? They are customers. And you wanted to like those people wanted to use your services, how they can use it so they can use it as well as some public API. Why some tools? So that is where I'm coming here as a part of like external source through which you can integrate it. It also supports as integrate. So it integrated like when you see a normal you put a normal prompt, you get a response that's any a stuff.

00;03;36;14 - 00;03;58;24

Right. But once you get the response and over the top of the response, you for if you perform a certain actions right, that comes as an as integrate. So yeah. So I wanted to give an a real time example. So whenever let's say you are going with your friends family for a dinner. Now you wanted to book some restaurant, right?

00;03;58;27 - 00;04;18;25

So what you basically do is like you will try to search the restaurant phone number online, okay, over the web, and then you try to connect to all them, right. And then you will ask it make a reservation for this table. And how many members are coming there. So there is an external source which you need it so that you can connect.

00;04;18;26 - 00;04;42;28

So MCP is a way which it provides a tool or what I consider a V through which are outside that all the external sources can communicate with you. So that was the example of restaurant phone number. And last but not the least is like MCP, was developed by a company called anthropic okay. And later it had become open source.

00;04;43;01 - 00;05;08;16

It was in like, 2024. MCP has repeatedly like, becoming an industry standard, which is basically, making more widespread use of AI agents. So I'll move to the next slide. Yeah. So how does MCP messaging work? State assist works. So firstly like the request. So you will have MCP client which are some information from MCP server.

00;05;08;19 - 00;05;37;28

Then MCP server provides a desired response rate with the proper information that is called as a results list. Let's say there are some request to the MCP client you are sending to the MCP server, and it may not be give you a reply that may you can cause it a call an error okay. And then at the end for the notification kind of thing, let's say you got a notification from the server side that suddenly it's going to restart within five minutes.

00;05;38;01 - 00;05;57;26

So that is what you can see that a notification right. It will be like one way message. No response is needed. Only one message. So like you are announcing or some cloud service or some public service inside you, you are building some clouds, then you are doing an announcement. So that is like a broadcasted to everyone, but there is no response needed for that.

00;05;57;28 - 00;06;27;26

So, so yeah, that's the part of MCP messages work. So I'll move to the next slide. It's called what is MCP server. So we talk you what is MCP model context protocol. Now what do you mean. So MCP server is a program which is basically hosted on a cloud. Right. It exposes the capability of AI agents. So using MCP server you can communicate to any of the like establish say Oracle database.

00;06;28;00 - 00;06;51;19

We have come up with our own MCP stuff, MCP tools. So we wanted to communicate Oracle database. We can communicate using MCP server. You can build your own AI application and you want it to communicate to some other application. Right. Let's say I want you to communicate to Oracle Database or I want to communicate Microsoft GitHub pilot or I want to communicate some other services like cloud or a client, some services.

00;06;51;19 - 00;07;14;12

So there are certain tools which may be available. So MCP server is like a kind of program which basically does provide these tools through which you can communicate to other services. For example, an email service like agent can send emails on the behalf of human use it. That means there is an agent which uses MCP so it can send an email.

00;07;14;12 - 00;07;40;01

Right. Similarly. So yeah. So in the industry there are a lot of questions, which are coming on a daily basis, like what other MCP security we should use it or not use it. So yeah. So MCP basically does not use any authentication authorization mechanism which is natively built in. So the company who is going to build who is going to provide this MCP server, they have to implement for themselves.

00;07;40;03 - 00;08;06;19

It doesn't require any use of Http. Instead of that it basically runs over the Http. Many implementation. So it basically, if you are using a step it may lack encryption authentication. Right. These things may lack. So what what you basically can do is like you can build your own your own certificate data, things through which they should be, like attack which can not be, which can be avoided actually.

00;08;06;22 - 00;08;37;19

So if you are not using TR less than attack can be done. So you can build your own network like have your own mechanism security mechanism through which like, whenever you are going to build your own MCP. So through which, like, attackers may not be able to attack you similarly. It also like, as I already said, in my previous slide, you have some cloud services and, there are customers who wanted use that cloud services, how they can use it.

00;08;37;19 - 00;09;06;05

So basically what they will do is they they will try to see your and public service announcement and they will see what all the APIs are, which are available outside. And they will try to invoke those GPUs. Right, for that cloud services thing like that. Terms. So what if it is available like if it is hosted somewhere, it will provide you certain tools which an application can use it and try to communicate it thing like that.

00;09;06;07 - 00;09;29;21

Okay. So yeah, so if you are using excessive so the like MQ also provide a way where you can actually do a rate limiting. Also we can also make sure that let's say Oracle Database I'm giving you an MCP for Oracle Database. And you are trying to go via admin privilege and trying to delete some of the database or tables, do some nasty operations.

00;09;29;21 - 00;09;48;27

Right. So those type of things also we need to we should make sure that the from the security point of view, we should not expose publicly. So yeah. So user based v we have to do not give the permissions on the admin based. So yeah, those things are, there.

00;09;49;00 - 00;10;08;02

Moving to the next slide. Yeah. So here is the MCP server. What does it consist of. It basically consists of prompts. It basically consists of the tools and the resources from this something. When you are building an MCP, sorry, you have to prompt in such a way that your MCP server, you are a database like you are telling to them.

00;10;08;02 - 00;10;38;25

So if you are a database admin, you have to perform system operations. You have to perform DML operations, you have to perform these operations. So everything you have to give into the prompt, then the tools which you are making available, publicly available to everyone. Right. So those tools you have to build it and then the resources. So this also in my what I'm trying to say here is you have some config file you wanted to use, some let's say related things or you are trying to do a database connection.

00;10;38;25 - 00;10;57;13

So you need a wallet configuration. So those are our resources which you have to provide. So MCP server basically consists of these three things. When you build a MCP server you make sure what all the tools you are making exposed. What are the way you are prompting is what all the behaviors MCP will have. And the resources. Right.

00;10;57;13 - 00;11;31;14

Whether you know every resources do, whether you are using a database or some other things, right. You need to provide some configuration of those stuff. So now the topic is like how the MCP client server works. So MCP client server, if you you see it here right there is an application which has a prompt. We identify a need to perform an action, such as retrieving the data or interacting with the system, say so if you have a little application you are sending a request.

00;11;31;14 - 00;12;00;02

We call that as a request. Okay. When a client write MCP client, which is embedded within the within the application, this tries to connect to the MCP server that MCP is hosting. The tools and resources, right? That is something we are MCP client and server connections have been set. Now as soon you send a request this is something called tool discovery.

00;12;00;04 - 00;12;20;04

So what I am just trying to say is like you have a cloud services, it has multiple APIs. I'm just giving an example and you are trying to connect to, you are trying to perform some operation, or you have some Json payload or API payload, and you are trying to invoke certain tools or certain operations.

00;12;20;04 - 00;12;44;04

What you will basically do is you will call that API, right. But the tool discovery here, right? Once the MCU client use you send some from MCP client based on that prompt, it basically tries to discover that tool which it has to invoke, and then it caused a tool. So that tool, you can think like a public API or something else, right?

00;12;44;11 - 00;13;11;21

You can correlate with some your projects. So that's the way. So you will generate a tool called and that tool call using this MCP would get executed. Right. So basically what will happen like you build your application an alarm client is embedded within the application. It will call that a little server or it will call the MCP server.

00;13;11;23 - 00;13;22;19

MCP server basically does the a tool discovery and then you execute it. Right. And based on that it.

00;13;22;22 - 00;13;45;03

Basically send you the response so it performs certain actions. And then the result will be sent to the. So basically, what I am just trying to say like MCP client, basically it basically delivered the result from the server back to the application. It allows them to provide a grounded and accurate response to the user. So nowadays people basically use the technique mostly, right.

00;13;45;09 - 00;13;57;07

The development generation for the real time is to through which they can get the result. Do these MCP operations. Moving to the next slide.

00;13;57;09 - 00;14;26;18

Okay. So here is a MCP architecture. So if you see in this architecture you have a MCP host. You have MCP client MCP. So and MCP tools right. So if you see MCP hosting like a you have built an AI application. Okay. You build one application thing like that. That application has embedded MCP client which is inside the application.

00;14;26;21 - 00;14;57;02

Then you send a request. That request goes to the MCB server. Right. And then MCP server does that tool discovery find the actual tool, invoke the to execute the actual tool and get the response back to the MCP client. So that's a highly overview. And breaking down the components how it basically looks state. So you have an application, you come you up, type some prompts that application.

00;14;57;02 - 00;15;24;21

It basically handles those. You connect to the servers. So within that application you have inbuilt MCP client MCP client. Basically send will help you sending the prompt okay. The prompt will the request will go to the MCP server MCP server. As I already explained, it has a tool resources and prompt. So it basically tries to invoke the tool which it has to invoke it.

00;15;24;21 - 00;15;48;07

It try to do the tool discovery using the prompt. Right. What are the prompt you sent. And then it invokes the tool. Execute the tool and get the response back to the MacBook. Right? So here is the one which or I could has built it like few months back. Like we have released our own SQL, MCP server.

00;15;48;09 - 00;16;16;29

So if you see here, you have any of the model says you build one application, that application can be built in OpenAI cloud or Gemini. You build an application in any of the model. Your alarm application. When you are sending the request, it goes via MCP client. MCP client is inbuilt within the application. Okay. For Oracle we are using Http protocol.

00;16;17;01 - 00;16;46;21

So basically the MCP protocol will go to the like MCP server using the MCP protocol data. And then the request will go to the MCP server. MCP server has these many tools. If you can see connect list connect the running SQL but then a SQL disconnect connection helper okay. So based on your prompt these tools, one of the tool will get invoke and it will get executed.

00;16;46;23 - 00;17;17;06

So and the execution will happen inside the Oracle database okay. So you will get the response back. Once you get the response back end user will be able to see it. So that's the way basically this SQL server works okay. So now I'm just, showing you a high level flow of MCP working. This is for the demo purpose, which, we have built it just to show everyone like how you can also build your own MCP server.

00;17;17;08 - 00;17;43;00

Okay, so here, if you see, there is a MCP client, which we have, we have an application we have built inside that we have inbuilt MCP client users is sending a prompt. Right. It goes to the that it goes to MCP client. There's an MCP server. It which we have built it MCP server has these many tools.

00;17;43;02 - 00;18;10;28

List tool connect this SQL experience schema and explain table. These are the tools which we have. Build it for our database so that if anyone wants to use this tool, they can basically invoke using their application by connecting our MCP. So the way you can build it, and even we have built you like you can build your own orchestrator inside your own, orchestrator.

00;18;10;28 - 00;18;39;24

You can have an alarm planner like, which allow them to use it. Okay. And for us. Right. We built like OpenAI. We built OCI. So there are two elements which we have like, used it using this orchestrator. So once your connection comes. Right. You already know that MCP will consist of configuration. It's it consists of the resources, tools and the prompts.

00;18;39;26 - 00;19;13;09

So the resources in the config file, we you can change your alarm provider. Anyone can come, they can build they can change their LLN provider using the orchestrator. They can plan the things right one by one. So once the request comes via MCP client, MCP client, basically goes to the MCP server. Already we have provided context of the whether we are wanted to use OCI element or we want to do go for open element.

00;19;13;11 - 00;19;39;06

The content is already provided. MCP server invokes the tool discovery. Call it try to get the actual tool. It execute the tool, get the response back to the MCP client using this Lem. So if you are going to open the open, the context will already provide in your MCP stuff, right? Once you start the server, context will already be there that this is going to use this similarly.

00;19;39;06 - 00;20;04;11

Okay. So I'll just show that in the the practical demo. Then I'm going to show you, you will see how you can build your own LSM provider. And you can connect using MCP server. So these are the models which are available inside the OCI. Like you can see command leaders plus metal armor, metal armor, 70 billion Maverick Scott Rock three four.

00;20;04;12 - 00;20;27;29

So yeah. So these are all the models which we tried when we were building our own MCP stuff using Oracle database. So here you can see the token size eight which we tried like query tried gold model for 600 token size coral command. Let us also 600. So 600 block three also 600 tokens eight and grab four.

00;20;28;01 - 00;20;50;25

Then we had a 20,000 token size. And we found a very good response with the output it works seamlessly. Fine. Okay, using this Oracle database. So yeah. So because it has a huge token size 20,000 token, then we want to give it, giving the prompt it was trying to do the actual tool discovery, invoking the tool.

00;20;50;27 - 00;21;18;22

And, executing it and sending back as to the response. Yeah. So now I wanted to, also emphasize on like how you can come with your own genetic approach of MCP server for database operations. So, if you have already built a orchestrator which has the alarm provider, which you want to use, you do not want to use, then as I was saying earlier, agent.

00;21;18;22 - 00;21;42;24

Right? Once you get the response, you can perform certain actions over that response. That's where the agent plays a major role. So you have a user, you have a orchestrator service already there. You have inbuilt MCP client. As you can see on the right side, you have a tool execution site. So you can build your own feedback loop mechanism.

00;21;42;26 - 00;22;07;13

So how the feedback loop mechanism you can build it is like let's say you give some prompt and the first thing is like your s once the alarm tries to convert your normal English into the SQL query, it basically says, oh, there's a SQL syntax error. And the tool execution did not happen because SQL syntax did not generate it properly.

00;22;07;16 - 00;22;31;27

And then there is an error. So you can actually calculate the score. Whether that's good syntax is proper to execution is proper or the error handling. Let's say this good syntax is not up to the mark. Right. What you see in the feedback loop mechanism that your score is less like you can define your own square, score like splice square syntax one two.

00;22;31;27 - 00;22;58;17

The execution like 101 hundred. And the score is lesser than 100 like 60. You said it. Try to invoke again. You can again try to invoke that another element and you can make it correct. So that's the way using existing approach you can do a scoring of your stuff. You can try to perform certain actions. Let's say there's an error of SQL and the tool which you are using.

00;22;58;17 - 00;23;21;16

That tool doesn't have the proper, syntax and you did not get executed. Now let's say you ordered the problem right. What do the SQL you got that is queries. What's the proper. Well it was proper but the tool execution was not proper. What you will do, you will change your tool. You'll go to another tool or you will go to another tool.

00;23;21;18 - 00;23;40;29

And if you go to the another tool and it get executed. So that's the way feedback loop mechanism, you can build it. Here's one more slide. Like if you have a distributed database and you have you wanted to build an MCP server. So in that distributed database you have a catalog database you have a shard database shard is something like across the globe, right.

00;23;41;01 - 00;24;06;18

You have one in the Mumbai region. You have one in the Singapore or Chicago or somewhere else. So these are the shards. You are the catalog database you can build for each database, your MCP server. You can build one application which has been built client. And you can communicate these MCP servers. So that's the highly overview. Okay. Now I will be moving to the next section of the live demo.

00;24;06;21 - 00;24;21;15

Like how MCP server works okay. Using the below prompt. And these are the prompt which I am going to use like connect to the database and list user tables, list user table standards and even keywords. So these are the things.

00;24;21;18 - 00;24;28;06

That wraps up this episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next Oracle Academy Tech Chat podcast.