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Oracle Database
Proprietary database management system

Oracle Database, developed by Oracle Corporation, is a proprietary multi-model database management system widely used for online transaction processing, data warehousing, and mixed workloads. It is available on-premises, on-cloud, or as a hybrid installation, supporting deployments on third-party servers, Oracle hardware like Exadata, and Oracle Cloud. Oracle Database utilizes SQL for data manipulation and retrieval, making it a versatile and powerful solution for diverse database workloads.

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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 CIA-funded project Ellison had worked on while formerly employed by Ampex;4 CIA was Oracle's first customer, and allowed the company to use the code name for the new product.5

Ellison wanted his database to be compatible with IBM System R, but that company's Don Chamberlin declined to release its error codes.6 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".7

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 Ellison "knew no one would want to buy version 1".89 For some database releases, Oracle also provides an Express Edition (XE) that is free to use.1011

Oracle Database release numbering has used the following codes:

Legend:Old version, not maintainedOld version, still maintainedLatest versionLatest preview versionFuture version LTR = Long-Term Release, IR = Innovation Release
Oracle Database VersionInitial Release VersionInitial Release DateTerminal VersionMarquee Features
Latest version: Oracle Database 23ai (LTR)23.4.0On May 2, 2024, Oracle Database 23ai12 was released on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as cloud services, including OCI Exadata Database Service, OCI Exadata Database Cloud@Customer, and OCI Base Database Service. It is also available in Always Free Autonomous Database. Oracle Database 23c (previously released in 2023) was renamed to Oracle Database 23ai (23.4) due to the significant additional engineering effort to add features that bring AI capabilities to the data in Oracle Database.

Oracle Database 23c (23.2 and 23.3) was released in 2023: April 2023 (Linux) Oracle Database Free - Developer Release13September 2023 Oracle Database on Base Database Service14

AI Vector Search15 (includes new Vector data type, Vector indexes, and Vector SQL operators/functions), JSON Relational Duality,16 JSON Schema Validation, Transactional Microservices Support, OKafka, Operational Property Graphs, Support for SQL/PGQ, Schema Privileges, Developer Role, In-database SQL Firewall, TLS 1.3 Support, Integration with Azure Active Directory OAuth2, True Cache for mid-tier caching, Readable Per-PDB Standby, Globally Distributed Database with active-active RAFT-based replication, Real-time SQL Plan Management, Priority Transactions, SQL Syntax Simplification, Schema Annotations, Data Use Case Domains, Column Value Lock-free Reservations
Old version, still maintained: Oracle Database 21c (IR)21.1.0December 2020 (cloud)17

August 2021 (Linux)18

Blockchain Tables, Multilingual Engine - JavaScript Execution in the Database, Binary JSON Data Type, Per-PDB Data Guard Physical Standby (aka Multitenant Data Guard), Per-PDB GoldenGate Change Capture, Self-Managing In-Memory, In-Memory Hybrid Columnar Scan, In-Memory Vector Joins with SIMD, Sharding Advisor Tool, Property Graph Visualization Studio, Automatic Materialized Views, Automatic Zone Maps, SQL Macros, Gradual Password Rollover
Old version, still maintained: Oracle Database 19c (LTR)19.1.0 // 12.2.0.3February 2019 (Exadata)19

April 2019 (Linux)20June 2019 (cloud)

Active Data Guard DML Redirection, Automatic Index Creation, Real-Time Statistics Maintenance, SQL Queries on Object Stores, In-Memory for IoT Data Streams, Hybrid Partitioned Tables, Automatic SQL Plan Management, SQL Quarantine, Zero-Downtime Grid Infrastructure Patching, Finer-Granularity Supplemental Logging, Automated PDB Relocation
Old version, not maintained: Oracle Database 18c (IR)18.1.0 // 12.2.0.2February 2018 (cloud, Exadata)21

July 2018 (other)22

18.17.0January 2022Polymorphic Table Functions, Active Directory Integration, Transparent Application Continuity, Approximate Top-N Query Processing, PDB Snapshot Carousel, Online Merging of Partitions and Subpartitions
Old version, not maintained: Oracle Database 12c Release 212.2.0.1March 2017August 2016 (cloud)

March 2017 (on-premises)

12.2.0.1March 2017Native Sharding, Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance, Exadata Cloud Service, Cloud at Customer
Old version, not maintained: Oracle Database 12c Release 112.1.0.1July 20132312.1.0.2July 2014Multitenant architecture, In-Memory Column Store, Native JSON, SQL Pattern Matching, Database Cloud Service
Old version, not maintained: Oracle Database 11g Release 211.2.0.1September 20092411.2.0.4August 2013Edition-Based Redefinition, Data Redaction, Hybrid Columnar Compression, Cluster File System, Golden Gate Replication, Database Appliance
Old version, not maintained: Oracle Database 11g Release 111.1.0.6September 200711.1.0.7September 2008Active Data Guard, Secure Files, Exadata
Old version, not maintained: Oracle Database 10g Release 210.2.0.1July 20052510.2.0.5April 2010Real Application Testing, Database Vault, Online Indexing, Advanced Compression, Data Guard Fast-Start Failover, Transparent Data Encryption
Old version, not maintained: Oracle Database 10g Release 110.1.0.2200310.1.0.5February 2006Automated Database Management, Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor, Grid infrastructure, Oracle ASM, Flashback Database
Old version, not maintained: Oracle9i Database Release 29.2.0.120029.2.0.8April 2007Advanced Queuing, Data Mining, Streams, Logical Standby
Old version, not maintained: Oracle9i Database9.0.1.020019.0.1.5December 2003Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle XML DB
Old version, not maintained: Oracle8i Database8.1.5.019988.1.7.4August 2000Native internet protocols and Java, Virtual Private Database
Old version, not maintained: Oracle8 Database8.0.3June 19978.0.6Recovery Manager, Partitioning. First version available for Linux.26
Old version, not maintained: Oracle 7.37.3.0February 19967.3.4Object-relational database
Old version, not maintained: Oracle 7.27.2.0May 1995Shared Server, XA Transactions, Transparent Application Failover
Old version, not maintained: Oracle 7.17.1.0May 1994Parallel SQL Execution. First version available for Windows NT.27
Old version, not maintained: Oracle77.0.12June 1992Distributed 2-phase commit,28 PL/SQL stored procedures, triggers, shared cursors, cost-based optimizer
Old version, not maintained: Oracle 6.26.2.0Oracle Parallel Server
Old version, not maintained: Oracle v66.0.1719886.0.37Row-level locking, SMP scalability / performance, storing of undo in database,29 online backup and recovery, B*Tree indexes, PL/SQL executed from compiled programs (C etc.). First version available for Novell Netware 386.30
Old version, not maintained: Oracle v55.0.22 (5.1.17)19855.1.22C2 security certification. Support for distributed database systems31 and client/server computing. First version available for OS/2. Correlated sub-queries.32 DOS version supports extended memory.33
Old version, not maintained: Oracle v44.1.4.019844.1.4.4Multiversion read consistency. Halloween Problem solved. Improved concurrency.34 First version available for MS-DOS3536 and IBM mainframe.37
Old version, not maintained: Oracle v33.1.31983Concurrency control, data distribution, and scalability. Re-written in C for portability to other operating systems, including UNIX.3839
Old version, not maintained: Oracle v22.31979First commercially available SQL RDBMS. Basic SQL queries, simple joins40 and CONNECT BY joins. Atomic role-level SQL statements. Rudimentary concurrency control and database integrity. No query optimizer. Written in assembly language for the PDP-1141 to run in 128KB of RAM.42 Ran on PDP-11 and VAX/VMS in PDP-11 compatibility mode.43
Legend:Old version, not maintainedOld version, still maintainedLatest versionLatest preview versionFuture version LTR = Long-Term Release, IR = Innovation Release

The Introduction to Oracle Database includes a brief history on some of the key innovations introduced with each major release of Oracle Database.

See My Oracle Support (MOS) note Release Schedule of Current Database Releases (Doc ID 742060.1) for the current Oracle Database releases and their patching end dates.

Patch updates and security alerts

Prior to Oracle Database 18c, Oracle Corporation released Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) and Security Patch Updates (SPUs)44 and Security Alerts to close security vulnerabilities. These releases are issued quarterly; some of these releases have updates issued prior to the next quarterly release.

Starting with Oracle Database 18c, Oracle Corporation releases Release Updates (RUs) and Release Update Revisions (RURs).45 RUs usually contain security, regression (bug), optimizer, and functional fixes which may include feature extensions as well. RURs include all fixes from their corresponding RU but only add new security and regression fixes. However, no new optimizer or functional fixes are included.

Competition

In the market for relational databases, Oracle Database competes against commercial products such as IBM Db2 and Microsoft SQL Server.46 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 CRM), and IBM's hardware divisions work closely 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".47

See also

  • Companies portal
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Oracle Database. Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Oracle database Wikiversity has learning resources about Oracle Database

References

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  2. "Exadata" (PDF), Technical network, Oracle http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/exadata/exacm-ds-3409774.pdf ↩

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  16. "Oracle Announces General Availability of JSON Relational Duality in Oracle Database 23ai". Oracle Corporation. Retrieved 2 May 2024. https://blogs.oracle.com/database/post/oracle-announces-general-availability-of-json-relational-duality-in-oracle-database-23ai ↩

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