On June 16, 1977, Oracle was founded by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates with its trading name as Software Development Laboratories (SDL). The company name changed to Relational Software Inc in 1979. In 1982 the first database trial with IBM failed but the template Oracle Republic System in a subsequent trial that was led by Bob Miner succeeded and on the same year where the company name was changed to Oracle Systems Corporation to reflect the name of its products. The name was again changed to Oracle Corporation in 1995 and it has remained unchanged to date.
The following are different Oracle Versions released by Oracle Corporation.
Oracle V2.
Oracle V2 was the first commercial SQL RDMS that was launched in the market by Oracle. Launched in 1979 the “V” letter means version while the “2” means the second version. It was a basic version compared to current versions and was only able to run a few SQL queries and perform a few joint operations. It did not support transactions and the name “Oracle V2” was used as a marketing gimmick because the inventors believed that people would not purchase version 1.
Oracle V3.
This version was launched in 1983 and it introduced new features like scalability and concurrency control. This supported the execution of transactions, SQL statements and it had options of pre-join data which increased Oracle optimization.
Oracle V4.
The demand for Oracle was high that led to an improvement of the software with a release of version 4 in 1984. It had features like support for reading consistency which was faster than the previous versions. It also had export or import utilities and a report writer which allowed users to create a report based on a query.
Oracle V5.
It was launched in 1985 and introduced features like client-server computing and a distributed database system. This meant that not all storage devices were attached to one common processor and could be stored in multiple computers located in the same physical location. Clustering Technology was introduced, and Oracle was the first to adopt this technology. Clustering Technology later would-be Oracle Real Application Cluster in V9i.
Oracle V5.1.
Launched in 1986 it enabled support for distributed queries. In the same year, SQL Plus and SQL Forms were released.
Oracle V6.
It was released in 1988 and it introduced the following features online; backup, recovery, and row-level locking.
Oracle 7.
Was launched in 1992 and it introduced PL/SQL that increased reusability by storing PL/SQL procedures and it would trigger an operation based on update command. A parallel server option was also introduced. This meant that it supported simultaneous database access from more than two loosely coupled systems thus achieving high performance.
Oracle 8.
Launched in 1997 and afterward, in the year 2000 8i was released. The “i” stands for the internet. It had new features like Native Internet protocols and Java. PLSQL was introduced in this version to deploy applications on Web.XML parser for Java. Also, a case statement in SQL like the “DECODE” function was introduced.
Oracle 9i.
It was launched in 2001 and the “i” refers to the internet. It came with features like Oracle RAC. Oracle Real Application Clusters helps in providing applications for clustering and availability in Oracle database environments. It allows multiple computers to run Oracle RDBMS simultaneously accessing a single database thus enabling clustering. Data mining and analysis algorithms for analytics were also introduced.
Oracle 10g Release1.
It was first launched in 2003, and the letter “g” means grid. Grid is a feature introduced in Oracle 10g. This enables modular storage and low-risk servers by providing an adaptive software infrastructure. It helps by providing capacity on-demand and balancing the overall workload. Other features introduced include grid infrastructure, Oracle ASM, and an Automated Database management system.
As technology keeps on evolving other versions are being introduced in the market to keep up with the consumer demand and needs. It is important to do thorough research of the different products offered by Oracle before purchasing one.
