Oracle Database

Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a proprietary multi-model 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-prem, on-cloud, or as a hybrid cloud installation. It may be run on third party servers as well as on Oracle hardware (Exadata on-prem, on Oracle Cloud or at Cloud at Customer). Oracle Database uses SQL query language for database updating and retrieval. 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. Oracle products follow a custom release-numbering and -naming convention. The "c" in the current release, Oracle Database 23c, stands for "Cloud". Previous releases (e.g. Oracle Database 10g and Oracle9i Database) have used suffixes of "g" and "i" which stand for "Grid" and "Internet" respectively. Prior to the release of Oracle8i Database, no suffixes featured in Oracle Database naming conventions. Note that there was no v1 of Oracle Database, as co-founder Larry Ellison "knew no one would want to buy version 1". Oracle Database release numbering has used the following codes: 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) and Security Alerts to close security vulnerabilities.