This document discusses new features in Oracle Active Data Guard 12c. It provides a history of Data Guard capabilities from version 7 through 11g. Key new features in 12c include Far Sync, which allows redo transport between databases across greater distances; Fast Sync, which improves synchronization performance between primary and standby databases; and real-time cascading, which allows a standby database to cascade redo in real-time as it is written to the standby redo log.