Oracle Code Assist is now available in beta. The coding assistant was first announced in May, when Oracle said it would be optimized for Java, SQL, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure-based applications.

The AI-assisted tool is already in use at Oracle, where the company says:

"thousands of developers in Oracle use the Code Assist plugin in their daily work to create boilerplate code, build and run unit tests, generate documentation, and receive answers to coding questions."

The beta version, as promised optimized for Java, is now available in beta for external developers. Oracle says it will also work for most modern programming languages including Python, JavaScript, SuiteScript, Rust, Ruby, Go, PL/SQL, C#, and C. It will be available as a plugin for JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA and Microsoft Visual Studio Code. Oracle Code Assist is powered by large language models (LLMs) on OCI. The beta version can be used to generate code and unit tests; to annotate code, explain code, and provide chat-based answers to coding-related questions.

When the tool was first announced, Oracle said developers would be able to tailor Oracle Code Assist to an organization’s own codebase, libraries, policies, and practices. It uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to enable developers to connect to an organization’s codebase and guidelines and the tool will then generate suggestions tailored to that content.

Oracle Code Assist also comes with real-time flags to highlight bugs and make suggested fixes. It uses a pretrained LLM-driven localization technique to automatically identify code snippets where bugs exist and then suggest fixes. Developers can then generate unit tests automatically to verify fixes that have been applied.

Oracle has also announced that there will be a version of Code Assist for NetSuite SuiteScript. NetSuite is owned by Oracle and NetSuite applications can be customized using the SuiteScript scripting language. Oracle says Code Assist is planned to have SuiteScript optimizations.

Code Assist consists of two main components, a development environment plugin which the developer interacts with, and a backend running the service and models. The plugins for IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code offer context-based help and a free-form chat and prompt interface. The plugins are responsible for composing the prompt delivered to the backend of the service. The plugin also collects usage metrics and user feedback to help Oracle understand how Code Assist is being used and gauge customer satisfaction, but Oracle says Code Assist never stores any code snippets that you provide in your prompts:

"Your prompt and any code provided is only employed temporarily by the backend service until a satisfactory response is provided. When Code Assist provides the response, your prompt is deleted. Likewise, Code Assist doesn't collect personally identifiable information (PII)."

The Code Assist backend is an API-connected service that performs inference on OCI graphics processing units (GPUs) running optimized large language models (LLMs). It exposes a streaming interface for lower perceived latency.

Oracle Code Assist is available in beta now.

More Information

Oracle Code Assist Beta Signup

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