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Oracle Database

Proprietary database management system

Proprietary database management system

FieldValue
nameOracle Database
logoOracle logo.svg
developerOracle Corporation
released
latest_release_version
latest_release_date
genreMulti-model database
programming languageAssembly language, C, C++
licenseProprietary
website

Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a proprietary multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation.

It is a database commonly used for running online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing (DW) and mixed (OLTP & DW) database workloads. Oracle Database is available by several service providers on-premises, on-cloud, or as a hybrid cloud installation. It may be run on third party servers as well as on Oracle hardware (Exadata on-premises, on Oracle Cloud or at Cloud at Customer).

Oracle Database uses SQL for database updating and retrieval.

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

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

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".{{cite web | access-date= 13 January 2017 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170116143330/http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cia-made-larry-ellison-a-billionaire-2014-9?international=true&r=US&IR=T | archive-date= 16 January 2017 | url-status= live

Oracle Database release numbering has used the following codes:

Oracle
Database
VersionInitial
Release
VersionInitial
Release
DateTerminal
VersionMarquee
Features
23.26.0Starting with Release Update 23.26.0, released in October 2025, Oracle Database 23ai is replaced by Oracle AI Database 26ai.
23.4.0From Release Update 23.26.0 onward, 23ai is replaced by Oracle AI Database 26aiAI Vector Search (includes new Vector data type, Vector indexes, and Vector SQL operators/functions), JSON Relational Duality, 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
21.1.0December 2020 (cloud)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
19.1.0 // 12.2.0.3February 2019 (Exadata)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
18.1.0 // 12.2.0.2February 2018 (cloud, Exadata)18.17.0
January 2022Polymorphic Table Functions, Active Directory Integration, Transparent Application Continuity, Approximate Top-N Query Processing, PDB Snapshot Carousel, Online Merging of Partitions and Subpartitions
12.2.0.1
March 2017August 2016 (cloud)12.2.0.1
March 2017Native Sharding, Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance, Exadata Cloud Service, Cloud at Customer
12.1.0.1July 201312.1.0.2
July 2014Multitenant architecture, In-Memory Column Store, Native JSON, SQL Pattern Matching, Database Cloud Service
11.2.0.1September 200911.2.0.4
August 2013Edition-Based Redefinition, Data Redaction, Hybrid Columnar Compression, Cluster File System, Golden Gate Replication, Database Appliance
11.1.0.6September 200711.1.0.7
September 2008Active Data Guard, Secure Files, Exadata
10.2.0.1July 200510.2.0.5
April 2010Real Application Testing, Database Vault, Online Indexing, Advanced Compression, Data Guard Fast-Start Failover, Transparent Data Encryption
10.1.0.2200310.1.0.5
February 2006Automated Database Management, Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor, Grid infrastructure, Oracle ASM, Flashback Database
9.2.0.120029.2.0.8
April 2007Advanced Queuing, Data Mining, Streams, Logical Standby
9.0.1.020019.0.1.5
December 2003Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle XML DB
8.1.5.019988.1.7.4
August 2000Native internet protocols and Java, Virtual Private Database
8.0.3June 19978.0.6Recovery Manager, Partitioning. First version available for Linux.
7.3.0February 19967.3.4Object-relational database
7.2.0May 1995Shared Server, XA Transactions, Transparent Application Failover
7.1.0May 1994Parallel SQL Execution. First version available for Windows NT.
7.0.12June 1992Distributed 2-phase commit, PL/SQL stored procedures, triggers, shared cursors, cost-based optimizer
6.2.0Oracle Parallel Server
6.0.1719886.0.37Row-level locking, SMP scalability / performance, storing of undo in database, online backup and recovery, B*Tree indexes, PL/SQL executed from compiled programs (C etc.). First version available for Novell Netware 386.
5.0.22 (5.1.17)19855.1.22C2 security certification. Support for distributed database systems and client/server computing. First version available for OS/2. Correlated sub-queries. DOS version supports extended memory.
4.1.4.019844.1.4.4Multiversion read consistency. Halloween Problem solved. Improved concurrency. First version available for MS-DOS and IBM mainframe.
3.1.31983Concurrency control, data distribution, and scalability. Re-written in C for portability to other operating systems, including UNIX.
2.31979First commercially available SQL RDBMS. Basic SQL queries, simple joins 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-11 to run in 128KB of RAM. Ran on PDP-11 and VAX/VMS in PDP-11 compatibility mode.
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) 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). 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. 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".

References

References

  1. Lextrait, Vincent. (March 2016). "The Programming Languages Beacon, v16".
  2. "OTN Standard License". Oracle.
  3. "Multimodel Database with Oracle Database 12c Release 2". Oracle.
  4. "Exadata". Oracle.
  5. "Oracle and Standard SQL".
  6. "Welcome to Larryland". The Guardian.
  7. (2007-06-12). "RDBMS Workshop: Oracle". Computer History Museum.
  8. (1985-05-20). "Oracle announces portable version of IBM SQL/DS and DB2".
  9. (2007-06-12). "RDBMS Plenary 1: Early Years". Computer History Museum.
  10. "Free Oracle Database for Everyone".
  11. "Release Schedule of Current Database Releases".
  12. "Release Schedule of Current Database Releases".
  13. "Announcing Oracle Database 23ai: General Availability".
  14. "Oracle Database 23c Free - Developer Release".
  15. "Oracle Database 23c on OCI Base Database Service".
  16. "Oracle Announces General Availability of AI Vector Search in Oracle Database 23ai".
  17. "Oracle Announces General Availability of JSON Relational Duality in Oracle Database 23ai".
  18. "Oracle Database 21c".
  19. Hardie, William. (23 September 2021). "Oracle Database 21c Now Available On Linux".
  20. (2019-02-13). "Oracle Database 19c Now Available on Oracle Exadata".
  21. (2019-04-25). "Oracle Database 19c Now Available on Linux".
  22. (2018-02-16). "Oracle Database 18c : Now available on the Oracle Cloud and Oracle Engineered Systems".
  23. (2018-07-23). "Oracle Database 18c Now Available For On-Premises".
  24. (2013-07-01). "Oracle Announces General Availability of Oracle Database 12c, the First Database Designed for the Cloud".
  25. (2009-09-01). "Oracle® Database 11g Release 2 is Now Available".
  26. (2005-07-11). "Oracle Announces General Availability of Oracle® Database 10g Release 2".
  27. Biggs, Maggie. (1998-10-05). "Oracle8 on Linux shows promise".
  28. Nash, Kim. (1994-10-03). "Oracle users ponder product overload". IDG Enterprise.
  29. O'Brien, Timothy. (1991-04-29). "Oracle unveils data base for Novell NetWare 386 LANs".
  30. Mace, Scott. (1989-01-30). "DOS Version of Professional Oracle 5.1B Adds SQL Report Writer".
  31. Webster, Robin. (1984-11-13). "PC Relational Database? New Answer is Oracle".
  32. Gralike, Marco. (2006-04-04). "Back to the future (Oracle 4.1 VM appliance)".
  33. (1983). "Data Processing Digest Volumes 29-30". [[Roger Sisson.
  34. Departments of Informatics. "Oracle V2". University of Klagenfurt.
  35. Maheshwari, Sharad. (2007). "Introduction to SQL and PL/SQL". Firewall Media.
  36. (2013). "Oracle Data Guard 11gR2 Administration Beginner's Guide". Packt Publishing Ltd.
  37. "Patch Delivery Methods for Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2.0.1) and Later Versions". Docs.oracle.com.
  38. (2007-06-12). "RDBMS Plenary Session: The Later Years". Computer History Museum.
  39. (1983-02-22). "DBMS and the workstation: Oracle gets close". [[The Rosen Electronics Letter]].
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