Oracle Rdb is a

relational database management system A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

for the

OpenVMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Op ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. It was originally released by

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

(DEC) in 1984 as VAX Rdb/VMS.

Product history

Rdb was a component of the ''VAX Information Architecture'', and was designed to interoperate with other Digital database tools and application frameworks such as the Application Control Management System, Datatrieve and the Common Data Dictionary. It originally provided a proprietary query interface known as the Relational Data Operator (RDO), but later gained support for ANSI SQL. In 1994 DEC sold the Rdb division to

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

where it was rebranded Oracle Rdb. As of 2020, Oracle is still actively developing Rdb, with over half of the codebase developed under Oracle's ownership. It remains a VMS-only product; version 7.0 runs on OpenVMS for

VAX VAX (an acronym for virtual address extension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...

and

Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...

, version 7.1 on Alpha only, and versions 7.2 to 7.4 on Alpha and IA-64 (Itanium). Rdb featured one of the first cost-based optimizers, and after acquisition Oracle introduced a cost-based optimizer in its regular Oracle RDBMS product. On March 22, 2011, Oracle announced it had decided to end all software development on the

Itanium Itanium (; ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit computing, 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). The Itanium architecture originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was later jointly dev ...

, and that Oracle Rdb 7.3 would be the last major version released by Oracle. Due to a lawsuit filed by HP against Oracle, Oracle was ordered to continue porting its software to Itanium computers for as long as HP (now

Hewlett Packard Enterprise The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas. It is a business-focused organization which works in servers, storage, networking, containerization software and ...

) sells Itanium computers. Despite the announcement that 7.3 would be the last major release, Oracle released version 7.4.1.0 of Rdb in August 2020 for OpenVMS on both Alpha and Itanium. In November 2020, Oracle announced that they are in the process of porting Rdb 7.4 to the

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

port of OpenVMS.

Data access

Interactive access to the Oracle Rdb can be by

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

(Structured Query Language), RDO (Relational Database Operator), or both. High level languages usually access Oracle-Rdb by: #embedding RDO statements in the source file then running it through a precompiler #:(example: "file.RCO" is pre-compiled into "file.COB") #embedding SQL statements in the source file then running it through a precompiler #:(example: "file.SCO" is pre-compiled into "file.COB") #placing the SQL statements in a file external to the source code; this separate file is converted to object code by the "SQL Module Language" compiler, and the source code then references these SQL statements and, after compilation, the two are joined by the OpenVMS

linker Linker or linkers may refer to: Computing * Linker (computing), a computer program that takes one or more object files generated by a compiler or generated by an assembler and links them with libraries, generating an executable program or shar ...

. example: $ SQL$MOD file_bas.sqlmod → file_bas.obj $ BASIC file.bas → file.obj $ LINK file.obj,file_bas.obj → file.exe A variation of example 3 allows "Dynamic SQL" to be created in the source code, and then used to communicate with Rdb via a structure known as SQLDA (SQL Descriptor Area). On OpenVMS systems, Oracle Rdb is a popular (although expensive) upgrade path for applications written using

Record Management Services Record Management Services (RMS) are procedures in the VMS, RSTS/E, RT-11 and RSX-11M operating systems that programs may call to process files and records within files. Its file formats and procedures are similar to of those in some IBM acc ...

(RMS) files.

Architecture

Rdb is built on top of a low-level database kernel named KODA, which handles functionality such as locking, journaling, and buffering of data. The KODA kernel is shared with Oracle's

CODASYL CODASYL, the Conference/Committee on Data Systems Languages, was a consortium formed in 1959 to guide the development of a standard programming language that could be used on many computers. This effort led to the development of the programming ...

DBMS (originally known as VAX DBMS) which is a

network model In computing, the network model is a database model conceived as a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships. Its distinguishing feature is that the schema, viewed as a graph in which object types are nodes and relationship ty ...

database.

Rdb on other platforms

VAX Rdb/ELN was the name of Digital's relational database for the

VAXELN VAXELN (typically pronounced "VAX-elan") is a discontinued real-time operating system for the VAX family of computers produced by the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) of Maynard, Massachusetts. As with RSX-11 and VMS, Dave Cutler was the pr ...

operating system. Despite sharing the Rdb name, and being announced at the same time, Rdb/ELN was not based on Rdb/VMS, or vice versa. Rdb/ELN was created by

Jim Starkey Jim Starkey (born January 6, 1949, in Illinois) is a database architect responsible for developing InterBase, the first relational database to support multi-versioning,Babcock, Charles"MySQL Database to Get Replication Monitoring, Multiversionin ...

, and was the first commercially available database to use

Multiversion concurrency control Multiversion concurrency control (MCC or MVCC), is a non-locking concurrency control method commonly used by database management systems to provide concurrent access to the database and in programming languages to implement transactional memory. ...

. Ports of Rdb previously existed or were planned for

Tru64 Tru64 UNIX is a discontinued 64-bit UNIX operating system for the Alpha instruction set architecture (ISA), currently owned by Hewlett-Packard (HP). Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corporation (DE ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

. Demand for the

version was so low that support was dropped. The Windows NT port was never released as Oracle could not obtain support on the

BLISS BLISS is a system programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by W. A. Wulf, D. B. Russell, and A. N. Habermann around 1970. It was perhaps the best known system language until C debuted a few years later. Since then, C ...

compiler necessary for this platform. In order to port Rdb to these platforms, an abstraction layer named the Common Operating System Interface (COSI) was implemented to isolate the database from the underlying operating system. Digital provided a relational database for their

Ultrix Ultrix (officially all-caps ULTRIX) is the brand name of Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) discontinued native Unix operating systems for the PDP-11, VAX, MicroVAX and DECstations. History The initial development of Unix occurred on DEC eq ...

operating system named ULTRIX/SQL, but it was based on

Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( ; ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...

instead of Rdb.

References

External links

Oracle-Rdb home page

Oracle Rdb listserver discussion
{{Oracle Oracle software OpenVMS software Oracle acquisitions