Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a
multi-model database management system
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...
produced and marketed by
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...
.
It is a database commonly used for running
online transaction processing In online transaction processing (OLTP), information systems typically facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications. This is contrasted with online analytical processing.
The term "transaction" can have two different meanings, both of wh ...
(OLTP),
data warehousing
In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central repositories of integra ...
(DW) and mixed (OLTP & DW) database workloads. Oracle Database is available by several service providers
on-prem,
on-cloud, or as a hybrid cloud installation. It may be run on third party servers as well as on Oracle hardware (
Exadata
The Oracle Exadata Database Machine (Exadata) is a computing platform optimized for running Oracle Databases.
Exadata is a combined hardware and software platform that includes scale-out Intel x86-64 compute and storage servers, RoCE or Infini ...
on-prem, on
Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud is a cloud computing service offered by Oracle Corporation providing servers, storage, network, applications and services through a global network of Oracle Corporation managed data centers. The company allows the ...
or at Cloud at Customer).
History
Larry Ellison
Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American business magnate and investor who is the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer (CTO) and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the American computer technology ...
and his two friends and former co-workers,
Bob Miner
Robert Nimrod Miner (December 23, 1941 – November 11, 1994) was an American businessman. He was the co-founder of Oracle Corporation and the producer of Oracle's relational database management system.
From 1977 until 1992, Bob Miner led prod ...
and
Ed Oates
Edward A. Oates (born 1946) is an American businessman. He co-founded Software Development Labs in August 1977 with Larry Ellison, and Bob Miner. Software Development Labs later became Oracle Corporation.
Education and early employment
Ed Oate ...
, started a consultancy called Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977. SDL developed the original version of the Oracle software. The name ''Oracle'' comes from the code-name of a
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
-funded project Ellison had worked on while formerly employed by
Ampex
Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe History ...
.
Releases and versions
Oracle products follow a custom release-numbering and -naming convention. The "c" in the current release, Oracle Database 21c, stands for "Cloud". Previous releases (e.g. Oracle Database 10g and Oracle9i Database) have used suffixes of "g" and "i" which stand for "Grid" and "Internet" respectively. Prior to the release of Oracle8i Database, no suffixes featured in Oracle Database naming conventions. Note that there was no v1 of Oracle Database, as co-founder
Larry Ellison
Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American business magnate and investor who is the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer (CTO) and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the American computer technology ...
"knew no one would want to buy version 1".
Oracle Database release numbering has used the following codes:
Th
Introduction to Oracle Databaseincludes a brief history on some of the key innovations introduced with each major release of Oracle Database.
See My Oracle Support (MOS) note
' 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.
Market position
A 2016
Gartner
Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its clients ...
report claimed to show Oracle holding #1 RDBMS market share worldwide based on the revenue share ahead of its four closest competitors –
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
,
IBM,
SAP
Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant.
Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separ ...
and
Teradata
Teradata Corporation is an American software company that provides cloud database and analytics-related software, products, and services. The company was formed in 1979 in Brentwood, California, as a collaboration between researchers at Caltech ...
. A 2021
Gartner
Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its clients ...
Magic Quadrant report named Oracle a leader in Cloud Database Management Systems.
Competition
In the market for relational databases, Oracle Database competes against commercial products such as
IBM Db2
Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON a ...
and
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ma ...
. 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
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
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
IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create and integrate applications w ...
,
PeopleSoft
PeopleSoft, Inc. is a company that provides human resource management systems (HRMS), Financial Management Solutions (FMS), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise performance management (EPM) softwar ...
, and
Siebel Systems
Siebel Systems, Inc. () was a software company principally engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management (CRM) applications—notably Siebel CRM.
The company was founded by Thomas Siebel and Pat ...
CRM), and IBM's hardware divisions work closely with Oracle on performance-optimizing server-technologies (for example,
Linux on IBM Z
Linux on IBM Z or Linux on zSystems is the collective term for the Linux operating system compiled to run on IBM mainframes, especially IBM Z / IBM zSystems and IBM LinuxONE servers. Similar terms which imply the same meaning are ''Linux/390'', ...
). Niche commercial competitors include
Teradata
Teradata Corporation is an American software company that provides cloud database and analytics-related software, products, and services. The company was formed in 1979 in Brentwood, California, as a collaboration between researchers at Caltech ...
(in data warehousing and business intelligence), Software AG's
ADABAS
Adabas, a contraction of “adaptable database system," is a database package that was developed by Software AG to run on IBM mainframes. It was launched in 1971 as a non-relational database. As of 2019, Adabas is marketed for use on a wider ran ...
,
Sybase, and IBM's
Informix
IBM Informix is a product family within IBM's Information Management division that is centered on several relational database management system (RDBMS) offerings. The Informix products were originally developed by Informix Corporation, whose ...
, 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 such
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
relational and non-relational database systems as
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...
,
MongoDB
MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Serve ...
,
Couchbase
Couchbase Server, originally known as Membase, is an open-source, distributed ( shared-nothing architecture) multi-model NoSQL document-oriented database software package optimized for interactive applications. These applications may serve many ...
,
Neo4j
Neo4j is a graph database management system developed by Neo4j, Inc. Described by its developers as an ACID-compliant transactional database with native graph storage and processing, Neo4j is available in a non-open-source "community edition" ...
,
ArangoDB
ArangoDB is a free and open-source native graph database system developed by ArangoDB Inc. ArangoDB is a multi-model database system since it supports three data models (graphs, JSON documents, key/value) with one database core and a unified q ...
and others. Oracle acquired
Innobase
Innobase was a Finnish company headquartered in Helsinki, Finland. Innobase is best known for being the developer of the InnoDB transactional storage engine for the MySQL open source database system. From 2005 on, Innobase was a subsidiary of Ora ...
, supplier of the
InnoDB
InnoDB is a database engine, storage engine for the database management system MySQL and MariaDB. Since the release of MySQL 5.5.5 in 2010, it replaced MyISAM as MySQL's default table type. It provides the standard ACID-compliant Database transact ...
codebase to
MySQL
MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...
, in part to compete better against open source alternatives, and acquired
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
, owner of MySQL, in 2010. Database products licensed as open-source are, by the legal terms of the
Open Source Definition
''The Open Source Definition'' is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark.
The definition was taken from the exact text of the Debian Free ...
, free to distribute and free of royalty or other licensing fees.
See also
*
Comparison of relational database management systems
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of relational database management systems. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are b ...
*
Comparison of object–relational database management systems
*
Database management system
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...
*
List of relational database management systems
This is a list of relational database management systems.
List of software
* 4th Dimension
*Access Database Engine (formerly known as Jet Database Engine)
*Adabas D
*Airtable
*Apache Derby
*Apache Ignite
* Aster Data
*Amazon Aurora
*Altibase
* CA ...
*
List of databases using MVCC
The following database management systems and other software use multiversion concurrency control.
Databases
* Altibase
* Berkeley DB
* Cloudant
* Cloud Spanner
* Clustrix
* CockroachDB
* Couchbase
* CouchDB
* CUBRID
* IBM Db2 – since IBM D ...
References
External links
Overview provided by Oracle Corporation
{{Oracle
Client-server database management systems
Relational database management systems
Proprietary database management systems
Database engines
Relational database management software for Linux
Cloud infrastructure
Oracle Cloud Services