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== History ==
[[Larry Ellison]] and his two friends and former co-workers, [[Bob Miner]] and [[Ed Oates]], started a consultancy called Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977, later [[Oracle Corporation]]. SDL developed the original version of the Oracle software. The name ''Oracle'' comes from the code-name of a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]-funded project Ellison had worked on while formerly employed by [[Ampex]]
Ellison wanted his database to be compatible with [[IBM System R]], but that company's [[Don Chamberlin]] declined to release its error codes.{{r|rdbmsearlyyearsoh20070612}} By 1985 Oracle advertised, however, that "Programs written for [[SQL/DS]] or [[DB2]] will run unmodified" on the many non-IBM mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers its database supported "Because all versions of ORACLE ''are'' identical".<ref name="oracle19850520">{{Cite magazine |date=1985-05-20 |title=Oracle announces portable version of IBM SQL/DS and DB2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ygHfUXZWXlcC&pg=PA47#v=onepage&q&f=true |access-date=2025-06-07 |magazine=Computerworld |page=47 |type=Advertisement |volume=XIX |issue=20}}</ref>
=== Releases and versions ===
Oracle products follow a custom release-numbering and -naming convention. The "ai" in the current release, Oracle Database 23ai, stands for "Artificial Intelligence". Previous releases (e.g. Oracle Database 19c, 10g, and Oracle9i Database) have used suffixes of "c", "g", and "i" which stand for "Cloud", "Grid", and "Internet" respectively. Prior to the release of Oracle8i Database, no suffixes featured in Oracle Database naming conventions. There was no v1 of Oracle Database, as
| title= Larry Ellison Is A Billionaire Today Thanks to the CIA
| author= Julie Bort
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| archive-date= 16 January 2017
| url-status= live
}}</ref><ref name="rdbmsearlyyearsoh20070612">{{Cite interview |interviewer=Burton Grad |title=RDBMS Plenary 1: Early Years |url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102702562-05-01-acc.pdf |pages=33,35 |access-date=2025-05-30 |publisher=Computer History Museum |date=2007-06-12}}</ref> For some database releases, Oracle also provides an Express Edition (XE) that is free to use.<ref>{{cite web |title=Free Oracle Database for Everyone |url=https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/appdev/xe.html |website=[[Oracle Corporation|Oracle]] |access-date=19 February 2024}}</ref>{{r|rdbmslateryears20070612}}
Oracle Database release numbering has used the following codes:
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| June 1992
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| Distributed 2-phase commit,{{r|rdbmsoracle20070612}} PL/SQL stored procedures,
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| {{Version |o |Oracle 6.2}}
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| 1988
| 6.0.37
| Row-level locking, [[symmetric multiprocessor|SMP]] scalability / performance, storing of undo in database,{{r|rdbmsoracle20070612}} online backup and recovery, B*Tree indexes, [[PL/SQL]] executed from compiled programs (C etc.). First version available for [[NetWare#NetWare 3.x|Novell Netware 386]].<ref>{{cite magazine |last=O'Brien |first=Timothy |date=1991-04-29 |title=Oracle8 on Linux shows promise |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gw0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA2 |magazine=[[InfoWorld]] |access-date=2019-09-07 }}</ref>
|-
| {{Version |o |Oracle v5}}
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| 1985
| 5.1.22
| C2 security certification. Support for [[
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| {{Version |o |Oracle v4}}
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| 1984
| 4.1.4.4
| Multiversion read consistency. [[Halloween Problem]] solved. Improved concurrency.{{r|rdbmsoracle20070612}} First version available for [[MS-DOS]]
|-
| {{Version |o |Oracle v3}}
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| 1983
|
| [[Concurrency control]], data distribution, and [[scalability]]. Re-written in C for portability to other operating systems, including [[UNIX]].<ref>{{cite book |date=1983 |title=Data Processing Digest Volumes 29-30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eygmAQAAIAAJ&q=oracle+unix |publisher=[[Roger Sisson|Data Processing Digest]] |page=2}}</ref>{{r|rdbmsoracle20070612}}
|-
| {{Version |o |Oracle v2}}
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| 1979
|
| First commercially available SQL [[Relational database|RDBMS]]. Basic SQL queries, simple joins<ref name="VEI-Kuni-OraR2">{{cite web|url=http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=403|title=Oracle V2|website=Virtual Exhibitions in Informatics|publisher=University of Klagenfurt|author=Departments of Informatics|access-date=30 September 2019|url-status=live|archive-date=30 September 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190930122821/http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=403}}</ref> and <code>CONNECT BY</code> joins. Atomic role-level SQL statements. Rudimentary [[concurrency control]] and [[database integrity]]. No [[query optimizer]]. Written in [[assembly language]] for the [[PDP-11]]{{r|rdbmsoracle20070612}} to run in 128KB of [[Random-access memory|RAM]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Maheshwari |first=Sharad |date=2007 |title=Introduction to SQL and PL/SQL |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V1eMhnTq2BYC&pg=PA12 |publisher=Firewall Media |page=12 |isbn=9788131800386}}</ref> Ran on PDP-11 and [[VAX]]/VMS in PDP-11 compatibility mode.{{r|rdbmsoracle20070612}}
|-
| colspan="6" | <small>{{Version |l |show=111100}} '''LTR''' = ''Long-Term Release'', '''IR''' = ''Innovation Release''</small>
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=== Competition ===
In the market for relational databases, Oracle Database competes against commercial products such as [[IBM Db2]] and [[Microsoft SQL Server]].<ref name="rdbmslateryears20070612">{{Cite interview |interviewer=Burton Grad |title=RDBMS Plenary Session: The Later Years |url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102701921-05-01-acc.pdf |access-date=2025-05-30 |publisher=Computer History Museum |date=2007-06-12}}</ref> Oracle and IBM tend to battle for the mid-range database market on Unix and Linux platforms, while Microsoft dominates the mid-range database market on [[Microsoft Windows]] platforms. However, since they share many of the same customers, Oracle and IBM tend to support each other's products in many middleware and application categories (for example: [[WebSphere]], [[PeopleSoft]], and [[Siebel Systems]] [[Customer relationship management|CRM]]), and IBM's hardware divisions work closely{{Citation needed|date= February 2010}} with Oracle on performance-optimizing server-technologies (for example, [[Linux on IBM Z]]). Niche commercial competitors include [[Teradata]] (in data warehousing and business intelligence), Software AG's [[ADABAS]], [[Sybase]], and IBM's [[Informix]], among many others.
In the cloud, Oracle Database competes against the database services of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
Increasingly, the Oracle database products compete against [[open-source software]] relational and non-relational database systems such as [[PostgreSQL]], [[MongoDB]], [[Couchbase]], [[Neo4j]], [[ArangoDB]] and others. Oracle acquired [[Innobase]], supplier of the [[InnoDB]] codebase to [[MySQL]], in part to compete better against open source alternatives, and acquired [[Sun Microsystems]], owner of MySQL, in 2010. Database products licensed as open-source are, by the legal terms of the [[Open Source Definition]], free to distribute and free of royalty or other licensing fees.
==Reception==
The ''[[Rosen Electronics Letter]]'' in February 1983 stated that Oracle was "the most comprehensive offering we've seen" among databases, with good marketing and substantial installed base encouraging developers to write software for it. The newsletter especially approved of the user interface, noting the "simplicity of setting up 'programs'—queries, data manipulation, updates—without actually programming".<ref name="rosen19830222">{{Cite news |date=1983-02-22 |title=DBMS and the workstation: Oracle gets close |url=https://cdn.oreillystatic.com/radar/r1/02-83.pdf |access-date=2025-06-05 |work=[[The Rosen Electronics Letter]] |pages=3-5}}</ref>
== See also ==
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