Dr. Alexander Ulrich from Oracle will give a talk in the elite program’s special lecture series. The title of the talk is “Eliminating the Data Tax: Server-Side Logic in Oracle Database” and it will take place in room 1055N at 4PM on 21 May 2026.

Abstract

Modern applications often pay a hidden “data tax”: data is stored in one system, processed in another, and repeatedly moved across network and process boundaries. This adds latency, complexity, and operational cost. One way to reduce this tax is to move computation closer to the data.

This lecture explores how Oracle Database is evolving into an execution environment for data-centric applications. We will discuss the motivations, trade-offs, and systems challenges of running application logic directly inside the database engine.

The first part focuses on server-side logic in modern languages, including Oracle’s support for JavaScript and WebAssembly in the database, powered by GraalVM. The second part discusses lightweight isolation for such workloads, focusing on GraalOS, a userspace sandboxing project developed at Oracle that aims to combine strong multi-tenant isolation with low overhead and fast startup.

The talk connects ideas from database systems, programming language runtimes, operating systems, and cloud infrastructure.

Biography

Alexander Ulrich is a Director in Oracle’s Database division, where he leads research and development teams. He has been interested in database systems since his undergraduate studies and holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Tübingen.