Oracle Rdb is a relational database management system for the OpenVMS

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

. 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 un ...

(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 Application Control Management System (Application Control and Management System) (ACMS) is a transaction processing monitor software system for computers running the OpenVMS operating system. ACMS was developed by Digital Equipment Corporation ...

Datatrieve DATATRIEVE is a database query and report writer tool originally from Digital Equipment Corporation. It runs on the OpenVMS operating system, as well as several PDP-11 operating systems. DATATRIEVE's command structure is nearly plain English, a ...

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 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. Version 7.0 ran 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, 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 Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation. It is a database commonly used for running online ...

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 Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance comput ...

, 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) 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 version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging ...

port of OpenVMS.

Data access

Interactive access to the Oracle Rdb can be by SQL (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 acces ...

(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 l ...

DBMS (originally known as VAX DBMS) which is a

network model 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 types are arcs, ...

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 ...

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, Multiversioning ...

, and was the first commercially available database to use

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

. 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 technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

. 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 b ...

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 operating system named ULTRIX/SQL, but it was based on Ingres instead of Rdb.

References

External links

Oracle-Rdb home page

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