Oracle: what you need to know

Paul Grant explores the world of Oracle, from SQL to net databases.

Oracle began in an IBM lab in San Jose, California. There, in 1969, Ted Codd was working on a new approach to managing data - relational data management. It allowed users to intuitively organise data in a manner not seen before. Rather than imposing a hierarchical order, the relational approach arranged data into tables of related information.

The first time this technology entered the commercial market, years after its development, it was released by Oracle rather then IBM.

Oracle was founded in 1977 and, at the time of its first contract, consisted of just four people. Despite the small staff, it brought to market the first Structured Query Language (SQL) based relational database management system (RDBMS). Oracle is now the second-largest software company in the world, with revenues of more than $7.5bn and 36,000 employees.

In 1982 Oracle's founders recognised the trend towards open systems and re-wrote the company's software so it could be ported to any platform.

Oracle's product strategy has been to link key information technologies into integrated solutions. Its integrated family of portable software included the Oracle7 co-operative server database, the Designer 2000 and Developer 2000 set of life-cycle application development tools, and a strong suite of horizontal business applications. Oracle software products run on PCs, workstations, microcomputers, mainframes and massively parallel computers.

The company has expanded the RDBMS core to work with multimedia objects such as video, audio, graphics and text.

Oracle was one of the first companies to implement network computing-capable databases and products, and the first major software firm to make full-featured products available electronically on the internet.

ORACLE: FIRST IN LINE

1998: A full-featured net database

1998: Full web deployment of all applications

1998: Integrates front-office and enterprise applications

1998: Integrated Business Intelligence System

1998: Full-featured flow manufacturing product

1998: Complete financial consolidation engine

1998: Rapid, one-step planning

1998: Application modelling tools that generate 100 per cent of the application

1998: Breaks 100,000 TPC-C barrier

1997: Moves client/server applications to the web

1997: Supports Very Large Memory modules on Windows NT

1997: Supports clusters on NT

1996: Breaks 30,000 TPC-C barrier

1996: Announces open standards-based, web-enabled architecture

1995: 64-bit RDBMS

1995: Web connectivity kit to database 1994: Media server supports VOD

1992: Full applications implementation methodology (AIM)

1988: Introduces PL/SQL

1988: SMP Support 1987: Supports Client/Server

1986: Supports distributed queries

1985: Parallel server database

1983: Database written entirely in C (for portability)

1979: First commercial SQL RDBMS

ORACLE 8i - THE DATABASE FOR INTERNET COMPUTING

Development of internet technology and applications is happening at a furious pace.

Almost everyone is releasing products designed just for the net, which, in today's networked economy, is the largest source of information.

The ability to efficiently access and manage information for better decision-making can mean the difference between success and failure.

This is what Oracle aims to address with Oracle 8i. The product is a database for internet computing and provides a platform for building and deploying internet and enterprise applications.

Oracle hopes that by moving data off individual PCs to professionally managed, centralised data servers, people have access to integrated, enterprise-wide information and can therefore make better decisions.

Oracle 8i has a Java Virtual Machine built in to allow developers to write, store and execute Java code within the database itself for faster, more secure and more reliable applications. Java's write-once, run- anywhere flexibility makes it possible for off-the-shelf applications or customised Java programs to plug into Oracle8i, cost-effectively extending its capabilities.

ELLISON: IN QUOTES

Larry Ellison, Oracle's CEO, on the demise of client/server: "It is an evolutionary dead end. With professionally managed centralised servers and a database server, you can make the Wan 10 times more efficient."

On internet computing: "All corporate networks will be internets. Oracle's future is the internet."

On Oracle's new web-based applications: "A lot of people don't want to maintain their own servers. It just seems obvious this is a cheaper, more reliable and more feature-rich way of delivering applications."

On storing PC data in Oracle's iFS rather than a Windows NT file: "Microsoft is going after our database business. Well, we're going after their file system business."