March 2026 monthly summary for the Spark development effort. Delivered a critical compatibility upgrade for the Oracle JDBC driver, moving to version 23.26.1.0.0 to support the latest Oracle releases (including 26ai). Implemented in Apache Spark via commit 71b4d1b56d2e8f09e1b06c445c102cefc48be0c4, addressing SPARK-56183 and closing issue #54984. All build and test suites were executed with no user-facing changes observed, preserving Spark stability while improving external database compatibility.

Monthly summary for 2025-08: Focused on enhancing CI/testing reliability for Spark by updating the Oracle testing Docker image to the latest Oracle 23.9. This aligns the test environment with current Oracle features and fixes, reducing flakiness in Oracle-related tests and smoothing upgrade paths. The work was performed in the apache/spark repository and tracked under SPARK-53268. Key commit: efd7c85da42ae7554c40b056a54e0c7dc71f9b95 with message "[SPARK-53268][BUILD][TESTS] Update Oracle free version from 23.7 to 23.9".

Month: 2025-05 — Focused on updating the Oracle testing environment for apache/spark to ensure CI tests run against current Oracle features and fixes. Implemented an Oracle Testing Docker Image Update from 23.6 to 23.7, tied to SPARK-52015, with commit 30cf5b4561235328d844fc2b20d5977635cabd5b. This work improves test reliability, reduces environment drift, and accelerates feedback from CI.

January 2025 monthly summary for xupefei/spark: Focused on stabilizing and modernizing the CI/testing environment. Implemented an update to the Oracle testing Docker image to the latest 23.6 version to ensure the CI/testing environment stays current with features and fixes, reducing environment-related test instability and aligning with SPARK-50951.