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FAQ about Oracle Corporation

$Date: 09-Jun-2005 $
$Revision: 1.38 $
$Author: Frank Naudé $

Topics

Oracle's Head HQ buildings in Redwood Shores - also featured in the movie Bicentennial Man (1999)

Oracle Corporation was founded in 1977 in Redwood, California. They introduced the first Relational Database Management System based on the IBM System/R model and the first database management system utilizing IBM's Structured Query Language (SQL) technology.

Today, the Oracle DBMS is supported on over 80 different operating environments, ranging from IBM mainframes, DEC VAX minicomputers, UNIX-based minicomputers, Windows NT and several proprietary hardware-operating system platforms, and is clearly the world's largest RDBMS vendor.

Oracle employs more than 42,000 professionals in 93 countries around the world. Their expenditure for research and development is approximately 13% of their revenues.

Lawrence Joseph (Larry) Ellison (Born: 1944, Chicago) is president and CEO of Oracle corporation. He's the Oracle worlds hero, and he should be. Oracle Corporation, the company he founded with Robert N. (Bob) Miner and Edward A. (Ed) Oates back in 1977, has emerged as the world's largest vendor of software that helps large corporations and governments better manage their information. Check out the book: What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison". It's really a great book, and is pretty even handed with who Larry Ellison is with lots of interesting stories from the early days of Oracle. The name of the book came from a funny e-mail message that went around the company. The answer to the question is: "God doesn't think he's Larry..." Also read these articles about him: Q and A with Oracle's Larry Ellison!!! Executive Bio: Larry Ellison Larry Ellison - Man of the Week The grand obsessions of Larry Ellison

Bruce Scott was one of the first employees at Oracle (then Software Development Laboratories). He co-founded Gupta Technology (now known as Centura Software) in 1984 with Umang Gupta, and later became CEO and founder of PointBase, Inc. Bruce was co-author and co-architect of Oracle V1, V2 and V3. The SCOTT schema (EMP and DEPT tables), with password TIGER, was created by him. Tiger was the name of his cat.

Prophecy or prediction; answer to a question believed to come from the gods; a statement believed to be infallible and authoritative; a shrine at which these answers are given

There is, however, more to the word Oracle: used for the name of the database engine, and then later for the company itself. Larry Ellison and Bob Miner were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency in USA) where the CIA wanted to use this new SQL language that IBM had written a white paper about. The code name for the project was Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give all answers to all questions or something such ;-).

The project eventually died (of sorts) but Larry and Bob saw the opportunity to take what they had started and market it. So they used that project's codename of Oracle to name their new RDBMS engine. Funny thing is, that one of Oracle's first customers was the CIA...

Home Page:		http://www.oracle.com/
FAQ:		http://www.orafaq.org/
Address:		Oracle Corporation 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 United States of America
Phone:		(650) 506-7000
Fax:		(650) 506-7200

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1977

Relational Software Inc. (RSI - currently Oracle Corporation) established

1978

Oracle V1 ran on PDP-11 under RSX, 128 KB max memory. Written in assembly language. Implementation separated Oracle code and user code. Oracle V1 was never officially released.

1980

Oracle V2 released - the first commercially available relational database to use SQL. Oracle runs on on DEC PDP-11 machines. Coide is still written in PDP-11 assembly language, but now ran under Vax/VMS.

1982

Oracle V3 released, Oracle became the first DBMS to run on mainframes, minicomputers, and PC's (portable codebase). First release to employ transactional processing. Oracle V3's server code was written in C.

1983

Relational Software Inc. changed its name to Oracle Corporation.

1984

Oracle V4 released, introduced read consistency, was ported to multiple platforms, first interoperability between PC and server.

1986

Oracle V5 released. Featured true client/server, VAX-cluster support, and distributed queries. (first DBMS with distributed capabilities).

1987

CASE and 4GL toolset

1988

Oracle V6 released - PL/SQL introduced.
Oracle Financial Applications built on relational database.

1989

Released Oracle 6.2 with Symmetric cluster access using the Oracle Parallel Server

1991

Reached power of 1,000 TPS on a parallel computing machine.
First database to run on a massively parallel computer (Oracle Parallel Server).

1992

Released Oracle7 for Unix

1993

Rollout of Oracle's Cooperative Development Environment (CDE).
Introduction of Oracle Industries and the Oracle Media Server.

1994

Oracle's headquarters moved to present location.
Released Oracle 7.1 and Oracle7 for the PC.

1995

Reported gross revenues of almost $3 billion.

1995

OraFAQ.com website launched.

1997

Oracle8 released (supports more users, more data, higher availability, and object-relational features)

1998

Oracle announces support for the Intel Linux operating system

1999

Oracle8i (the "i" is for internet) or Oracle 8.1.5 with Java integration (JVM in the database)

2000

Oracle8i Release 2 released
Oracle now not only the number one in Databases but also in ERP Applications
Oracle9i Application Server generally available: Oracle tools integrated in middle tier

2001

Oracle9i Release 1 (with RAC and Advanced Analytic Service)

2002

Oracle9i Release 2

2004

Oracle10g Release 1 (10.1.0) available ("g" is for grid, the latest buzzword)

2005

The Oracle FAQ (this site) is 10 years old!

2005

Oracle10g Release 2 (10.2.0) available

Some performance related links can be found in the Dare to Compare section on this FAQ.

When you are registered as a support customer, you will receive a CSI (Customer Support Identification) number. Quote this number whenever you call for assistance.

When you log a call, Oracle will open a TAR (Technical Assistance Request) to identify and track your problem. TAR's can be logged with the following severity levels:

1. Priority 1: Critical Business Impact
2. Priority 2: Serious Business Impact
3. Priority 3: Minor Business Impact
4. Priority 4: No Business Impact
5. Priority 5: Information Request

• Oracle Corporation - Business and Financial Profile

• The Anti-Oracle Page - for the few that don't like Oracle

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