Developer(s) | Oracle Corporation |
---|---|
Initial release | 1979 |
Stable release | |
Written in | Assembly language, C, C++ [2] |
Type | Multi-model database |
License | Proprietary [3] |
Website | www |
Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a proprietary multi-model [4] 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). [5]
Oracle Database uses SQL for database updating and retrieval. [6]
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. SDL developed the original version of the Oracle software. The name Oracle comes from the code-name of a CIA-funded project Ellison had worked on while formerly employed by Ampex. [7]
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 co-founder Larry Ellison "knew no one would want to buy version 1". [8] For some database releases, Oracle also provides an Express Edition (XE) that is free to use. [9]
Oracle Database release numbering has used the following codes:
Legend: Old version, not maintained Old version, still maintained Latest version | |||||
Oracle Database Version | Initial Release Version | Initial Release Date | Terminal Version | Marquee Features | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Oracle Database 23ai | 23.4.0 | On May 2, 2024, Oracle Database 23ai [10] was released on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as cloud services, including OCI Exadata Database Service, OCI Exadata Database Cloud@Customer, and OCI Base Database Service. It is also available in Always Free Autonomous Database. Oracle Database 23c (previously released in 2023) was renamed to Oracle Database 23ai (23.4) due to the significant additional engineering effort to add features that bring AI capabilities to the data in Oracle Database. Oracle Database 23c (23.2 and 23.3) was released in 2023: April 2023 (Linux) Oracle Database Free - Developer Release [11] September 2023 Oracle Database on Base Database Service [12] | AI Vector Search [13] (includes new Vector data type, Vector indexes, and Vector SQL operators/functions), JSON Relational Duality, [14] 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 | ||
Oracle Database 21c | 21.1.0 | December 2020 (cloud) [15] August 2021 (Linux) [16] | 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 | ||
Oracle Database 19c | 19.1.0 // 12.2.0.3 | February 2019 (Exadata) [17] April 2019 (Linux) [18] | 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 | ||
Oracle Database 18c | 18.1.0 // 12.2.0.2 | February 2018 (cloud, Exadata) [19] July 2018 (other) [20] | 18.17.0 January 2022 | Polymorphic Table Functions, Active Directory Integration, Transparent Application Continuity, Approximate Top-N Query Processing, PDB Snapshot Carousel, Online Merging of Partitions and Subpartitions | |
Oracle Database 12c Release 2 | 12.2.0.1 March 2017 | August 2016 (cloud) March 2017 (on-premises) | 12.2.0.1 March 2017 | Native Sharding, Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance, Exadata Cloud Service, Cloud at Customer | |
Oracle Database 12c Release 1 | 12.1.0.1 | July 2013 [21] | 12.1.0.2 July 2014 | Multitenant architecture, In-Memory Column Store, Native JSON, SQL Pattern Matching, Database Cloud Service | |
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 | 11.2.0.1 | September 2009 [22] | 11.2.0.4 August 2013 | Edition-Based Redefinition, Data Redaction, Hybrid Columnar Compression, Cluster File System, Golden Gate Replication, Database Appliance | |
Oracle Database 11g Release 1 | 11.1.0.6 | September 2007 | 11.1.0.7 September 2008 | Active Data Guard, Secure Files, Exadata | |
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 | 10.2.0.1 | July 2005 [23] | 10.2.0.5 April 2010 | Real Application Testing, Database Vault, Online Indexing, Advanced Compression, Data Guard Fast-Start Failover, Transparent Data Encryption | |
Oracle Database 10g Release 1 | 10.1.0.2 | 2003 | 10.1.0.5 February 2006 | Automated Database Management, Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor, Grid infrastructure, Oracle ASM, Flashback Database | |
Oracle9i Database Release 2 | 9.2.0.1 | 2002 | 9.2.0.8 April 2007 | Advanced Queuing, Data Mining, Streams, Logical Standby | |
Oracle9i Database | 9.0.1.0 | 2001 | 9.0.1.5 December 2003 | Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle XML DB | |
Oracle8i Database | 8.1.5.0 | 1998 | 8.1.7.4 August 2000 | Native internet protocols and Java, Virtual Private Database | |
Oracle8 Database | 8.0.3 | June 1997 | 8.0.6 | Recovery Manager, Partitioning. First version available for Linux. [24] | |
Oracle 7.3 | 7.3.0 | February 1996 | 7.3.4 | Object-relational database | |
Oracle 7.2 | 7.2.0 | May 1995 | Shared Server, XA Transactions, Transparent Application Failover | ||
Oracle 7.1 | 7.1.0 | May 1994 | Parallel SQL Execution. First version available for Windows NT. [25] | ||
Oracle7 | 7.0.12 | June 1992 | PL/SQL stored procedures, Triggers, Distributed 2-phase commit, Shared Cursors, Cost-Based Optimizer | ||
Oracle 6.2 | 6.2.0 | Oracle Parallel Server | |||
Oracle v6 | 6.0.17 | 1988 | 6.0.37 | Row-level locking, scalability / performance, online backup and recovery, B*Tree indexes, PL/SQL executed from compiled programs (C etc). First version available for Novell Netware 386. [26] | |
Oracle v5 | 5.0.22 (5.1.17) | 1985 | 5.1.22 | Support for client/server computing and distributed database systems. First version available for OS/2. Correlated sub-queries [27] | |
Oracle v4 | 4.1.4.0 | 1984 | 4.1.4.4 | Multiversion read consistency. First version available for MS-DOS. [28] [29] | |
Oracle v3 | 3.1.3 | 1983 | Concurrency control, data distribution, and scalability. Re-written in C for portability to other operating systems, including UNIX. [30] | ||
Oracle v2 | 2.3 | 1979 | First commercially available SQL RDBMS. Basic SQL queries, simple joins [31] and CONNECT BY joins. Written in assembly language for the PDP-11 to run in 128KB of RAM. [32] Ran on PDP-11 and VAX/VMS in PDP-11 compatibility mode. | ||
Legend: Old version, not maintained Old version, still maintained Latest version |
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.
Prior to Oracle Database 18c, Oracle Corporation released Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) and Security Patch Updates (SPUs) [33] 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). [34] 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.
A 2016 Gartner report claimed to show Oracle holding #1 RDBMS market share worldwide based on the revenue share ahead of its four closest competitors – Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Teradata . [35] [ verification needed ][ clarification needed ] A 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant report named Oracle a leader in Cloud Database Management Systems. [36]
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[ citation needed ] 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.
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 organizes data into one or more data tables in which data may be related to each other; these relations help structure the data. SQL is a language that programmers use to create, modify and extract data from the relational database, as well as control user access to the database. In addition to relational databases and SQL, an RDBMS like MySQL works with an operating system to implement a relational database in a computer's storage system, manages users, allows for network access and facilitates testing database integrity and creation of backups.
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. In 2023, the company’s seat in Forbes Global 2000 was 80. The company sells database software and cloud computing. Oracle's core application software is a suite of enterprise software products, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, human capital management (HCM) software, customer relationship management (CRM) software, enterprise performance management (EPM) software, Customer Experience Commerce and supply chain management (SCM) software.
Structured Query Language (SQL) is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling structured data, i.e., data incorporating relations among entities and variables.
Ingres Database is a proprietary SQL relational database management system intended to support large commercial and government applications.
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 and XML. The brand name was originally styled as DB2 until 2017, when it changed to its present form.
A database administrator (DBA) manages computer databases. The role may include capacity planning, installation, configuration, database design, migration, performance monitoring, security, troubleshooting, as well as backup and data recovery.
An XML database is a data persistence software system that allows data to be specified, and sometimes stored, in XML format. This data can be queried, transformed, exported and returned to a calling system. XML databases are a flavor of document-oriented databases which are in turn a category of NoSQL database.
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 based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.
A LAMP is one of the most common software stacks for the web's most popular applications. Its generic software stack model has largely interchangeable components.
Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) is a set of web-based tools aimed at managing software and hardware produced by Oracle Corporation as well as by some non-Oracle entities.
In database computing, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) — an option for the Oracle Database software produced by Oracle Corporation and introduced in 2001 with Oracle9i — provides software for clustering and high availability in Oracle database environments. Oracle Corporation includes RAC with the Enterprise Edition, provided the nodes are clustered using Oracle Clusterware.
Oracle Multimedia is a feature available for Oracle databases, which provides multimedia utilities in a database environment, generating as a result a multimedia database (MMDB). Oracle Multimedia was deprecated in Oracle 18c and desupported in Oracle 19c.
ER/Studio is data architecture and database design software developed by IDERA, Inc. ER/Studio is compatible with multiple database platforms and is used to create and manage database designs, as well as to document and reuse data assets. In 2015, Embarcadero Technologies was acquired by database and infrastructure management software company IDERA, Inc. Since the acquisition by IDERA, Inc., ER/Studio has been renamed to ER/Studio Data Architect with updated features.
Embedded SQL is a method of combining the computing power of a programming language and the database manipulation capabilities of SQL. Embedded SQL statements are SQL statements written inline with the program source code, of the host language. The embedded SQL statements are parsed by an embedded SQL preprocessor and replaced by host-language calls to a code library. The output from the preprocessor is then compiled by the host compiler. This allows programmers to embed SQL statements in programs written in any number of languages such as C/C++, COBOL and Fortran. This differs from SQL-derived programming languages that don't go through discrete preprocessors, such as PL/SQL and T-SQL.
Oracle Linux is a Linux distribution packaged and freely distributed by Oracle, available partially under the GNU General Public License since late 2006. It is compiled from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code, replacing Red Hat branding with Oracle's. It is also used by Oracle Cloud and Oracle Engineered Systems such as Oracle Exadata and others.
Greenplum is a big data technology based on MPP architecture and the Postgres open source database technology. The technology was created by a company of the same name headquartered in San Mateo, California around 2005. Greenplum was acquired by EMC Corporation in July 2010.
A cloud database is a database that typically runs on a cloud computing platform and access to the database is provided as-a-service. There are two common deployment models: users can run databases on the cloud independently, using a virtual machine image, or they can purchase access to a database service, maintained by a cloud database provider. Of the databases available on the cloud, some are SQL-based and some use a NoSQL data model.
Informix Corporation, formerly Informix Software, Inc., was a software company located in Menlo Park, California. It was a developer of relational database software for computers using the Unix, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Macintosh operating systems.
NuoDB is a cloud-native distributed SQL database company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 2008 and incorporated in 2010, NuoDB technology has been used by Dassault Systèmes, as well as FinTech and financial industry entities including UAE Exchange, Temenos, and Santander Bank.
You should not get confused between Critical Patch Update (CPU) and Security Patch Update (SPU) as CPU terminology has been changed to SPU from October 2012.