TEC 5323 Advanced Database Technology
A Brief History of Oracle
The concept of relational database was first introduced around 1970 by Dr. Edgar F. Codd in an IBM research publication entitled "System 4R Relational." Initially, it was not clear if any system based upon the concept had any commercial significance. Nevertheless, Relational Software, Incorporated (RSI) was founded in 1979 by three young engineers and released Oracle v2 as the world's first relational database. The first major customer was Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In 1983, RSI was renamed Oracle Corporation to avoid confusion with a competitor named RTI, and to better streamline the product offerings. At this time, the developers made a critical decision to create a portable version of Oracle (Version 3) that ran not only on Digital VAX/VMS systems (very popular systems then), but also on UNIX and other platforms. By 1985, Oracle claimed the ability to run on more than 30 platforms, with more than 1000 relational database customer sites. Oracle was able to leverage and accelerate the growth of minicomputers and UNIX servers in the 1980s. Today, Oracle take advantages of all major platforms including Windows NT/2000, Sun Solaris UNIX, HP UNIX, Compaq UNIX, IBM AIX and Linux.
Oracle capitalize many innovative technical features to the database as computing and development models changed, for example, from offering the first distributed database to the first Java Virtual Machine in the core database engine. The following table list a brief history of Oracle's major technological introduction.
| Year |
Technology
|
| 1979 | Oracle Release 2--the first commercially available relational database to use SQL |
| 1983 | Single code base for Oracle across multiple platforms |
| 1984 | Portable toolset |
| 1986 | Client/server Oracle relational database |
| 1987 | Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) and 4th Generation Language (4GL) toolset |
| 1988 | Oracle Financial Applications built on relational database |
| 1989 | Oracle6 |
| 1991 | Oracle Parallel Server on massively parallel platforms |
| 1993 | Oracle7 with cost-based optimizer |
| 1994 | Oracle7.1 generally available: parallel operations including query, load, and create index |
| 1996 | Universal database with extended SQL via cartridges, thin client, and application server |
| 1997 | Oracle8 generally available: including object-relational and very large database (VLDB) features |
| 1999 | Oracle8i generally available: Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in database |
| 2000 | Oracle9i Application Server generally available: Oracle tools integrated in middle tier |
| 2001 | Oracle9i Database Server generally available: Real Application Clusters, Advanced Analytic Services. |
For more details, please read an article "25 Years of Technology Innovation" on Oracle Magazine.
Database Management Systems (DBMS) Market Share
Oracle database technology can be found in nearly every industry around the world--including large corporations, shipyards, factories, warehouses, online banking, and scientific research institutions. The following table lists the database market share up to May 2001 (by IDC):
|
DBMS Product
|
Market Share
|
|
Oracle
|
46.1%
|
|
IBM DB2
|
23.6%
|
|
Microsoft SQL Server
|
6.7%
|
|
Other
|
23.6%
|