Brief History of Oracle Database

Brief History of Oracle Database:
The current version of Oracle Database is a results of over 30 years of innovative development. The main highlights within the evolution of Oracle Database include the following:

Founding of Oracle:
In 1977, Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates started the consultancy Software Development Laboratories, which change name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI). In 1983, RSI became Oracle Systems Corporation then later Oracle Corporation.

First commercially available RDBMS:
In 1979, RSI introduced Oracle V2 (Version 2) which was a landmark event within the history of relational databases because it was the first commercially available SQL-based RDBMS,

Portable version of Oracle Database:
Oracle Version 3, released in 1983, was the primary electronic database to run on mainframes, minicomputers, and PCs. The database was written in C for enabling the database to be ported to multiple platforms.

Enhancements to concurrency control, data distribution, and scalability
Version 4 introduced multi version read consistency. Version 5, released in 1985,which supported client/server computing and distributed database systems. Version 6 brought the features enhancements to disk I/O, row locking, scalability, and backup and recovery. Also, Version 6 introduced the primary version of the PL/SQL language, a proprietary procedural extension to SQL.

PL/SQL stored program units:
Oracle 7, released in 1992, introduced the most expected  PL/SQL stored procedures and triggers.

Objects and partitioning:
Oracle 8 was released in 1997 because the object-relational database, supporting many new data types. Additionally, Oracle 8 supported partitioning of huge tables.

Internet computing:
Oracle 8i Database which has been released in 1999, provided native support for internet protocols and server-side support for Java. Oracle 8i was designed for internet computing, enabling the database to be deployed during a multitier environment.

Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC):
Oracle 9i Database introduced Oracle RAC in 2001, enabling multiple instances to access one database simultaneously. Additionally, Oracle XML Database (Oracle XML DB) introduced the power to store and query XML.

Grid computing:
Oracle Database 10g introduced grid computing in 2003. This release enabled organizations to virtualize computing resources by building a grid infrastructure supported low-cost commodity servers. A key goal was to form the database self-managing and self-tuning. Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) helped us to achieving this goal by virtualization and simplifying database storage management.

Manageability, diagnosability, and availability
Oracle Database 11g, which has been released in 2007, introduced a number of latest features that enable administrators and developers to adapt quickly to changing business requirements. The key to adaptability is simplifying the knowledge infrastructure by consolidating information and using automation wherever possible.