Oracle Corporation was founded in 1977 in Redwood, California. They introduced the first Relational Database Management System based on the IBM System/R model and the first database management system utilizing IBM's Structured Query Language (SQL) technology.

What is Oracle's history?

1977

Relational Software Inc. (RSI - currently Oracle Corporation) established

1978

Oracle V1 ran on PDP-11 under RSX, 128 KB max memory. Written in assembly language. Implementation separated Oracle code and user code. Oracle V1 was never officially released.

1980

Oracle V2 released - the first commercially available relational database to use SQL. Oracle runs on on DEC PDP-11 machines. Coide is still written in PDP-11 assembly language, but now ran under Vax/VMS.

1982

Oracle V3 released, Oracle became the first DBMS to run on mainframes, minicomputers, and PC's (portable codebase). First release to employ transactional processing. Oracle V3's server code was written in C.

1983

Relational Software Inc. changed its name to Oracle Corporation.

1984

Oracle V4 released, introduced read consistency, was ported to multiple platforms, first interoperability between PC and server.

1986

Oracle V5 released. Featured true client/server, VAX-cluster support, and distributed queries. (first DBMS with distributed capabilities).

1987

CASE and 4GL toolset

1988

Oracle V6 released - PL/SQL introduced.
Oracle Financial Applications built on relational database.

1989

Released Oracle 6.2 with Symmetric cluster access using the Oracle Parallel Server

1991

Reached power of 1,000 TPS on a parallel computing machine.
First database to run on a massively parallel computer (Oracle Parallel Server).

1992

Released Oracle7 for Unix

1993

Rollout of Oracle's Cooperative Development Environment (CDE).
Introduction of Oracle Industries and the Oracle Media Server.

1994

Oracle's headquarters moved to present location.
Released Oracle 7.1 and Oracle7 for the PC.

1995

Reported gross revenues of almost $3 billion.

1995

OraFAQ.com website launched.

1997

Oracle8 released (supports more users, more data, higher availability, and object-relational features)

1998

Oracle announces support for the Intel Linux operating system

1999

Oracle8i (the "i" is for internet) or Oracle 8.1.5 with Java integration (JVM in the database)

2000

Oracle8i Release 2 released
Oracle now not only the number one in Databases but also in ERP Applications
Oracle9i Application Server generally available: Oracle tools integrated in middle tier

2001

Oracle9i Release 1 (with RAC and Advanced Analytic Service)

2002

Oracle9i Release 2

2004

Oracle10g Release 1 (10.1.0) available ("g" is for grid, the latest buzzword)

2005

The Oracle FAQ (this site) is 10 years old!

2005

Oracle10g Release 2 (10.2.0) available