Oracle] Writing Historic Oracle - Oracle Company Legends: Fenng
Date: 09-Sep-2004
Source: http://www.dbanotes.net
Version: 1.01 (this article has been published in "programmer" magazine)
It's hard to imagine that Oracle's legend is actually starting with IBM.
In June 1970, IBM's researcher EDGAR FRANK CODD published the famous "relationship of large shared database data" on the Communications of ACM (a RELATIONAL Model of Data for Large Shared Paper of Data Banks. This is a turning point in the history of database development. It is important to know that the database products of the hierarchy model and the mesh model are in the main position. From this paper, the prelude to the relational database software revolution was opened.
Although the relationship model theory was born early in 1970, the launch of relational database management software is not seen in the market. The main reason is that many opponents believe that the relationship database speed is too slow, and it is less than the level of the class. It is worthy of funny, although IBM launched the actual feasibility of SYSTEM R in 1973 to study the actual feasibility of relational databases, and did not launch such a product in time because IBM's IMS (famous level database) market is good. If the relational database is introduced, it involves the own interests of many people in IBM. Furthermore, IBM's large complex bureaucratic institution is far less flexible.
In June 1977, Larry Ellison and the Bob Miner and Ed Oates found a computer company named Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in Silicon Valley (the predecessor of Oracle Company). At that time, the 32-year-old Larry Ellison, this student who has not graduated from three universities, is just a general software engineer. At the beginning of the company, Miner is president, oates is vice president, while Ellison, because of a contract, it is still working in another company. Not long after, the first employee Bruce Scott (people who have used Oracle Database Software knows that there is a Scott user? Yes, this Scott, as for the SCOTT user's password Tiger, that is the name of the cat raised by Scott) Come in, after Miner and Oates are tired of tired of the contractual development, they decided to develop universal software, but they don't know what kind of products they can develop. Oates first saw the famous papers of Edga Cartai, together with other related articles and recommended Ellison and Miner to read. Ellison and Miner foresee the huge potential of the database software (followed by IBM, yes), so SDL starts planning to build a commercially available relational database management system (RDBMS).
Soon they get out of a product, or specifically, more like a demo. According to Ellison and Miner, they are engaged in the project code invested by the Central Intelligence Agency in the previous company, they name this product Oracle. Because they believe, Oracle (the explanation in the dictionary has "God, prophecy" is the source of all wisdom. In 1979, SDL is renamed Relationship Software Co., Ltd. (RSI), after all, "Software Development Lab" is not very like a big company name. In 1983, in order to highlight the company's core products, RSI renamed Oracle again. Figure 1 A glimpse of the United States Oracle
Development and growth
RSI released commercial Oracle products available for DEC's PDP-11 computer in the summer of 1979. This database product integrates a relatively complete SQL implementation, including subqueries, connection, and other features. But have to say that software is not very stable and lacks important functions such as transactions. For market strategies, the company claims that this is the second edition of the product, but it is actually the first version. The reason why was named 2nd version instead of the first version because Ellison believes that potential customers are more willing to buy the second version, not the initial version. (Although this is a little is not very honest, I still have to admit that this is a very high-spirited skill. There are some companies to sell themselves to the customer. IRACLE. Oracle!) Many years later, Oracle The company claims that they first provide the first SQL relational database management system.
Although the software is not very good, the customer is still there. The US CIA can't wait to buy a set of such software to meet their needs. But after IBM, IBM did not have commercial products, they contacted RSI. So RSI has the first customer. At that time, the government and military institutions often had several computers, and there was no "software portable", of course, there is almost no application software with such an capability. That is, the Oracle database developed to PDP-11 cannot be used on VAX of IBM hosts and DEC. Soon users show this demand: Can Oracle run on different operating systems? This brings new challenges to RSI (mainly Miner and Scott). In the late 1970s and early in the 1980s, software was generally designed to run on a single operating system, and there is little software with portable ability.
In March 1983, RSI released the third edition of Oracle. Miner and Scott have been hard to use this version of C language. You know, the C language is launched soon, using it to write Oracle software is also a risk, but in addition, there is no other law. It quickly proved how correct this: C compiler is cheap and valid, and there is good portability. From now on, Oracle products have a key feature: [portability]. Oracle 3rd edition launched the "atomic" - SQL statement of SQL statements and transaction processing, either all success, or all failed, transaction processing is either all submitted, either roll back. Oracle 3rd editions also introduced non-blocking queries, using data stored in "Before Image File" to query and rollback transactions, avoiding the use of read locks (although it limits it by using table-level locks. Throughput). Also in 1983, IBM released a late Database 2 (DB2), but only on MVS. Anyway, Oracle has taken the opportunity.
SCOTT left Oracle when developing the third edition of the third edition. At that time, Crew Oracle's pressure was very high, and endless software debugging finally made Scott, and I chose a left. Give the remaining burden to Miner. After selling your own% 4, Scott has created the GUPTA (now Centura Software) and PointBase (providing 100% pure Java embedded database) is developed and database-related products. After many years, someone asked his% 4 Oracle stock, Scott, this once wrote a technical expert who wrote the first line of code to Oracle, and can only report to a smile. If you can stick to it, it is a wealth of a billion dollar bill. However, the Scott at that time did not have so many ideas, he was just too tired. Figure 2 Bruce Scott is now one of the founders of PointBase
Oracle first ports its software to the VMS operating system on the DEC VAX computer. As early as 1979, the company has hired a DEC's technology master Robot Brandt for development of Oracle on VAX. At the beginning, the funds were limited. You can only go to the University of California, Berkeley to go to the machine to develop, which is better, but the machine is also borrowed. Although difficulties are difficult, BRANDT is more successful completed transplantation. With the large number of sales of VAX small machines, Oracle software has also become the most popular procedures on VAX. This should be attributed to the priority of Larry to the market. If it is, IBM leads Oracle's big boat to walk on the database, then DEC's VAX is with them to sail. In just a few years, the Oracle database is transplanted above a variety of major platforms. Oracle products have always been concerned by those potential customers because there is a key feature of portability.
Oates This time because marriage tends to rupture, it is no longer to put all the efforts to the company and have to leave the company. A few years later, he returned to the company, re-enacted its huge contribution to Oracle, and he promised that he would leave again when the company's employees exceed 10,000 people. In 1999, he completed his wish. Now he is in the music, self-satisfaction.
For a long time, the company developed from Miner to borne. Miner regards money such as anonymous, is low-key, and the sharp contrast of Ellison's sharpness must be formed. In the company, everyone agreed that he was a good person, he also suffered from the employee. Ellison is the company's brain, Miner is well deserved to become the company's heart. He is a silent hero, just like Steve Wozniak behind Steve Jobs.
In October 1984, Oracle released the 4th edition product. The stability of the product has been enhanced, and the "industrial strength" has been reached with Miner. But it is not satisfactory, and users complain about the product seems to endless. This version adds read consistency. This is a key feature of the database that ensures that the user sees consistent data during the query. That is, when a session is modifying data, other sessions will not see the modifications that the session is not submitted. It can be seen that before the fourth edition of Oracle, the product is always unstable, but the salesperson of Oracle is mainly Ellison. He always exaggerate his words when promoting Oracle, but he is capable of selling software. Go, and, I have to sell very well, I have to admit that this is indeed a magical. Let's take a look at the Software Market in the 1984 software market, the overlord in the database market is Asnton-Tale, their fist products are just launching DBASE III (exactly, DBase is the database software overlord on the PC), just become The world's third largest independent software company (first and second are Microsoft, Lotus, Oracle is still not on the same time), this year, it is also the year of Apple Macintosh, Steven Jobs Challenges the old Big brother IBM. Also in this year, Oracle's developers have just ported to the PC. This is the best era and the worst era. Thousands of small companies fight in the software field, the new company is established, how can oracle be invincible? In 1985, Oracle released version 5.0. Some users say this version is calculated to be a stable version of the Oracle database. This is also the first RDBMS product that can be run in Client / Server mode. In terms of technical trends, the Oracle database has never been behind. This means that business applications running on desktop PC (clients) can access database servers over the network. The version 5.1 released in 1986 also supports distributed queries, allowing data stored in multiple locations through disposable queries.
That was in 1985, the largest independent software company Cullinet (main sales network database) has fallen as the meteor. Oracle's main competitor is an INGRES database. INGRES was born at the University of California, the main designer was the professor of Michael Stonebraker at that time. It can be said that the INGRES database software is the best database in the 1980s, and the rapid growth of the Ingres market quota has made great pressure to Oracle. Ingenious, this time, IBM has once again extended the "Hand of God".
INGRES uses Queel (Query Language) of Stonebraker invented, which is very different from IBM's SQL. At some places quel even better than SQL. IBM worried that INGRES would be unfavorable to themselves. After some measure, I decided to submit my SQL to the Database Standard Commission. And Professor Stonebraker may not intend to submit Quel to the Database Standards Committee, and the school sent himself actually kills the spirit of innovation. Two dogs fight, play off. Oracle saw and seized this excellent opportunity, and announced that Oracle is compatible with SQL, coupled with Oracle's attack on the version of Ingres PC (weakening the opponent advantage, resolving yourself is their most thaw), then In addition, Oracle's sales, Ingres continues to lose the city, waiting until the launch of the database that supports SQL, it is too late. Keep up with IBM to grow, grow, embrace standards, hug, hug changes, let Oracle are in an invincible. On March 12, 1986, Oracle was publicly listed on $ 15 per share, and the company closed at $ 20.70 million on the same day. On March 13, Microsoft was listed in $ 21 per share, and the company's market value reached $ 700 million in $ 28 billion. It's far more than Oracle. Microsoft and Gates of successful aura covers the rays of Oracle and Ellison, which may also start Ellison's start of Microsoft.
Figure 3 桀骜 桀骜 的 lr eis
Have a setback
Oracle No. 6 is released in 1988. Since the past versions are frequent in performance, Miner leads the engineers to rewrite the core of the database. The important feature of Row-Level Locking is introduced, that is, executing transaction processing is only locked by the affected row instead of the entire table. This version introduces a fixed PL / SQL (ProCedural Language Extension to SQL) language. The 6th edition also introduces the online hot backup function, enabling the database to create online backups during use, which greatly enhances usability. At the same time, Oracle began to develop ERP software.
The company's development looks more smoothly, but the nightmare just started.
Since the extent to which the software test pays attention to the software test - the company is small, it is basically the customer help free test. After the sixth version just released, many users who can't wait to start complaints. This is a product that has not been released at all, and it is also in the face of Ellison. Users have begun to attack Oracle, some opponents of Oracle, also started to fall into the stone, attacking some weaknesses of Oracle products. The developer cope with an angry user, and the procedure has been continuously corrected on one side, and finally, finally, I finally got a relatively stable version, temporarily calm the user's anger.
However, the actual problem is not here. In the past few years, it has also brought a huge hazard to the company, and the announcement of the third quarter of the third quarter of fiscal year detonated everything. Finance staff found $ 15 million of bad debts, and the company's profit distance expectation is far. In the next time, the general symptoms of big companies have followed, facing the shareholders' allegations, the stocks have a thousand feet, the company's prospects are dim, and even the bankruptcy. One degree relying on loans to maintain their luxurious life, Ellison, which does not sell stock, can't help. The company has a great effort to rectify financial security (the financial executive Jeff Walker saved the company some extent). The company announced its cut spending, rejecting a large number of sales staff, and hired specialized management talents. The nightmare continues to the launch of the Oracle seventh edition. This company has been empty for several years (once sarcasm is just the balance of Ellison), until June 1992, finally debut, this time the company has learned the sixth edition of the lesson listed lesson, Listening to the multi-faceted recommendations of the user, focusing on the new version a lot of and meticulous testing. This version adds many new performance features: distributed transaction features, enhanced management functions, new tools for application development, and security methods. Oracle7 also includes some new features, such as stored procedures, triggering procedures, and illustrative reference integrity, etc., and make the database truly programmable ability. It is also necessary to explain that this version introduces a new optimizer based on the original rule-based optimizer (RBO): Cost-based Optimizer, CBO). The CBO calculates the execution overhead of the statement based on the statistics of the database itself, thereby giving the specific statement execution plan. In several major versions of future, Oracle engineers have gradually improved this optimizer, and CBO has gradually replaced RBO.
Oracle Seventh Edition is an Oracle's truly excellent product and has achieved great success. The appearance of this version is a good time. At that time, Sybase's database had already occupied a lot, and Oracle took the success of this version, an aggressive Sybase. The company's sales personnel were time for users to honor the user. After two or three years of governance, the company finally got rid of all kinds of trouble, starting healthy development, and sales from $ 1.5 billion in 92.2 billion US dollars.
Peak
"Stuffed" is a stunt in Ellison. At the European Information Technology Forum meeting held in Paris in 1995, Ellison introduced the concept of Network Computer (NC) in an impromptu speech. The so-called NC refers to the configuration simple but makes full use of low-cost computers of network resources. Importantly, it does not require operating systems, or more accurately, do not require Microsoft operating systems. Ellison wants to borrow Microsoft's strength. Soon, Oracle combined IBM, Sun, Apple and Netscape developed a network computer standard in 1996, but in fact, people did not see a real NC production from head until the end. This speech caused an uproar in the industry. Through this incident, Oracle attracted enough attention, but also let people see Oracle's huge confidence in the network.
In June 1997, Oracle No. 8 was released. Oracle8 supports object-oriented development and new multimedia applications, which also lay the foundation for Internet, network calculations. At the same time, this version begins with the characteristics of simultaneous processing of mass users and massive data. This version is also possible.
In September 1998, Oracle officially released Oracle 8i. "I" represents the Internet, which adds a large number of features designed to support Internet. This version provides a full range of Java support for database users. Oracle 8i has become the first database that fully integrates the local Java runtime environment. You can write Oracle stored procedures with Java. Yes, Java, as long as it is able to combat Microsoft's weapons, Oracle must be used. Oracle8i adds SQLJ (an open standard for embedding the SQL database statement embedding client or server Java code) and Oracle Intermediate and the characteristics such as XML. At the same time, Oracle 8i greatly increases scalability, scalability, and availability to meet the needs of network applications. In the next few years, Oracle released several versions of 8i and gradually added some new features for network applications. In the face of the booming of open source movements, Oracle is naturally unganoishing, Oracle, Oracle, Oracle, released Oracle 8 and Oracle Application Server 4.0, which was available in Linux platform in 1998, and Oracle 8i for Linux was released. In the .com tide, Oracle is a tidal of the tip of the tip. In the Oracle OpenWorld meeting in June 2001, Oracle released Oracle 9i. In the new features of Oracle 9i, the most important thing is REAL Application Clusters (RAC). Speaking of the Oracle Cluster Server, when you are in the fifth edition, Oracle began to develop Oracle Parallel Server (OPS) and gradually improved its functionality in the later version, but strictly, although OPS Calculate is a cluster environment, but there is no advantage that the cluster technology should have. The RDB completely absorbed RDB (Oracle acquired Compaq's RDB database in 1994. The previous RDB belongs to DEC, and DEC has implemented some of the technical advantages of the first commercial RDB cluster database on VAX. Oracle finally launched. Real application cluster software. RAC makes multiple cluster computers to share access to a single database to achieve higher scalability, availability, and economics. Oracle 9i's RAC broke several records in TPC-C based benchmarks, and the industry attacked. This new database also contains integrated business intelligence (BI) features. Oracle 9i 2nd edition also made a lot of important improvements, making Oracle databases a local XML database; additional features of automatic management, Data Guard, etc.
History is still continuing
On September 8, 2003, Ellison announced the next generation of database products as "Oracle 10g" in the Oracle World conference held by San Francisco. Oracle Application Server 10G (Oracle Application Server 10g) will also be used as the next-generation application infrastructure software integration kit for Oracle. "G" represents "Grid, Grid". The biggest feature of this version is to join the functionality of grid computing. What is grid calculation? Grid computing can connect the computer distributed around the world and integrate computer resources throughout the world through high-speed Internet integration. Through reasonable scheduling, different computing environments are integrated and shared. Oracle claims that 10G can be used as the foundation of mesh calculations, and the heads of the biggest enemy IBM are "on demand"! It seems that Oracle has put this "bet" in the big market for grid computing. But what is the prospect? let us wait and see. If, IBM is a giant whale in the IT industry, then Oracle must be a big shark: aggressive, be good at attack. June 2003, Oracle suddenly announced $ 5.1 billion to acquire PeopleSoft, and the industry was once again shaken. Out another time Oracle has always been good at the nature of attack. To know, Oracle rarely acquires companies in the development process, then what is the purpose of acquiring Renke? First, the Oracle 觊觎 Enterprise application has been a long time, but it is especially important that it is impossible to further expand the market quota. important. Today, Oracle still does not give up the trend and benevolent work, and what we will wait and see.
"The biggest happiness of life is to defeat the enemy", Ellison must like this sentence very much.
The author of this article is Fenng, a US-owned company DBA, spare time, mixed with each database, and is not tired. Currently payment of how to use the Oracle database effectively build enterprise applications. A little study on Oracle Tuning, Troubleshooting.
Personal technology site:
http://www.dbanotes.net/. You can contact him by email dbanotes@gmail.com.
Origin
http://www.dbanotes.net/oracle/history_about_oracle_company.htm
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