History of Oracle Corporation.

1)June 16, 1977: Oracle Corporation was incorporated in Redwood Shores, California as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.

2)June 1979: SDL is renamed to Relational Software Inc. (RSI), and relocates to Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California. Oracle 2, the first version of the Oracle database software runs on PDP-11 and is sold to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The company decides to name the first version of its flagship product version 2 rather than version 1 because it believes companies may hesitate to buy the initial release of its product (and, or IBM would not divulge to render the original take).

3)October 1979: RSI actively promotes Oracle on the VAX platform (the software runs on the VAX in PDP-11 emulator mode)

4)1981 Umang Gupta joined Oracle Corporation where he wrote the first business plan for the company, and served as Vice President and General Manager of the Microcomputer Products.

5)February 1981: RSI begins developing tools for Oracle, including the Interactive Application Facility (IAF), a predecessor to Oracle*Forms.

6)Bruce Scott was one of the first employees at Oracle (then Software Development Laboratories). He co-founded Gupta Technologies (which later became Centura Software) in 1984 with Umang Gupta, and later became CEO and founder of PointBase, Inc. Bruce was co-author and co-architect of Oracle V1, V2 and V3. He created the sample schema "SCOTT" (containing tables like EMP and DEPT) with the password defaulted to TIGER (apparently named after his cat).

7)March 1983: RSI rewrites Oracle in C for portability and Oracle version 3 is released. RSI is renamed to Oracle to more closely align with its primary product. The word Oracle was the code name of a CIA project which the founders had all worked on while at the Ampex Corporation.

8)April 1984: Received additional funding from Sequoia Capital.

9)October 1984: Oracle version 4 released, introducing read consistency.

10)November 1984: Oracle ports the database software to the PC platform. The MS-DOS version (4.1.4) of Oracle runs in only 512K of memory. Oracle for MSDOS version 5 was released in 1986 running in Protected Mode on 286 machines using a technique invented by Mike Roberts, among the first products to do so.

11)April 1985: Oracle version 5 released. It is one of the first RDBMSs to operate in client-server mode.

12)1986: Oracle version 5.1 released with support for distributed queries. Investigations into clustering begin.

13)March 12, 1986: Oracle goes public with revenues of $55 million USD.

14)August 1987: Oracle founds its Applications division, building business management software closely integrated with its database software. Oracle acquires TCI for its project management software.

15)1988: Oracle version 6 is released with support for row-level locking and hot backups. The PL/SQL procedural language engine was embedded in the database but no provision was made to store program blocks such as procedures and triggers in the database - this capability was added in v7. PL/SQL blocks could be submitted for immediate execution in the server from an environment such as SQL*Plus, or via SQL statements embedded in a host program. Separate PL/SQL engines were included in various client tools (SQL*Forms, Reports).

16)1989: Oracle moves world headquarters to Redwood Shores, California. Revenues reach US$584 million.

17)1990: In the third quarter, Oracle reports its first ever loss, hundreds of employees are laid off. Ellison hires Jeffrey O. Henley as CFO and Raymond Lane as COO.

18)June 1992: Oracle 7 released with performance enhancements, administrative utilities, application development tools, security features, the ability to persist PL/SQL program units in the database as stored procedures and triggers, and support for declarative referential integrity.

19)1993: Releases Oracle's Cooperative Development Environment (CDE) which bundles Oracle Forms, Reports, Graphics, Book.

20)1994: Oracle acquired the database-product DEC Rdb (now called Oracle Rdb) from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and development is still going on. Oracle Rdb is only available on the OpenVMS platform (also a former product of DEC).

21)June 21, 1995: Oracle announces new data warehousing facilities, including parallel queries.

22)November 1995: Oracle is one of the first large software companies to announce an internet strategy when Ellison introduces the network computer concept at an IDC conference in Paris.

23)April 1997: Oracle releases the first version of Discoverer, an ad-hoc query tool for business intelligence.

24)June 1997: Oracle 8 is released with SQL object technology, internet technology and support for terabytes of data.

25)September 1997: Oracle announces its commitment to the Java platform, and introduces Oracle's Java integrated development environment, which will come to be known as Oracle JDeveloper.

26)January 1998: Oracle releases Oracle Applications 10.7 NCA. All the applications in the business software now run across the web in a standard web browser.

27)May 1998: Oracle Applications 11 is released.

28)April 1998: Oracle announces that it will integrate a Java virtual machine with Oracle Database.

29)September 1998: Oracle 8i is released.

30)October 1998: Oracle 8 and Oracle Application Server 4.0 are released on the Linux platform.

31)May 1999: Oracle releases JDeveloper 2.0, showcasing Business Components for Java (BC4J), a set of libraries and development tools for building database aware applications.

32)2000: OracleMobile subsidiary founded. Oracle 9i released.

33)May 2000: Oracle announces the Internet File System (iFS), later rebranded as Oracle Content Management SDK.

34)June 2000: Oracle9i Application Server released with support for building portals.

35)2001: Ellison announces that Oracle saved $1 billion implementing and using its own business applications.

36)2004: Oracle 10g released.

37)December 13, 2004: After a long battle over the control of PeopleSoft, Oracle announces that it has signed an agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for $26.50 per share (approximately $10.3 billion).

38)January 14, 2005: Oracle announces that it will reduce its combined workforce to 50,000, a reduction of approximately 5,000 following the PeopleSoft take over. 90% of PeopleSoft product development and product support staff will be retained.

39)March, 2005: Oracle extends its Middle East operations by opening a regional office in Amman, Jordan.

40)September 2005: Oracles announces that it has agreed to acquire Global Logistics Technologies, Inc. (private company), a global provider of logistics and transportation managements software (TMS) solutions through a cash offer.

41)September 12, 2005: Oracle announces it had agreed to buy Siebel Systems, the global leader in CRM technologies and a key player in the BI realm, for $5.8 billion.

42)October 25, 2006: Oracle announces Unbreakable Linux.

43)November 2, 2006: Oracles announces that it has agreed to acquire Stellent, Inc. (NASDAQ: STEL), a global provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software solutions, through a cash tender offer for $13.50 per share, or approximately $440 million.

44)December 15, 2006, a majority of MetaSolv stockholders approved Oracle’s acquisition of MetaSolv Software, a Leading Provider of Operations Support Systems (OSS) Software for the Communications Industry.

45)March 1, 2007: Oracle announced that it has agreed to buy Hyperion Solutions Corporation (Nasdaq: HYSL), a leading global provider of performance management software solutions, through a cash tender offer for $52.00 per share, or approximately $3.3 billion. The transaction is subject to customary conditions and is expected to close in April 2007.

46)March 22, 2007: Oracle filed a court case against its major competitor SAP AG in the Californian courts for malpractice and unfair competition. The full text of the filing can be found on the claimants web site under the heading newsroom.

47)October 12, 2007: Oracle announced that it had made a bid to buy BEA Systems for a price of $17/share, an offer that was rejected by the BEA board who felt that the company was worth more than that.

48)October 16, 2007: Oracle confirms impending departure of John Wookey, senior vice president for application development and head of its applications strategy, raising questions in the planned release and future of Oracle's Fusion Applications strategy.

49)January 16, 2008: Oracle announces it is buying BEA Systems for $19.375/Share in cash for a total of '$7.2 billion net of cash.'



H.Tonguç Yılmaz - Oracle Blog
History of Oracle
Posted in Oracle Other by H.Tonguç Yılmaz on December 27th, 2006

1978 -> Oracle V1; first commercial SQL relational database management system (RDBMS), Main architect Bob Miner, ran on pdp-11 under rsx; 128Kb memory, written in assembly, separated oracle and user codesto overcome the memory limitations

1979 -> Oracle V2; written in pdp-11 assembly language, ran on vax/vms in compatibility mode

1980 -> Oracle V3; written in C, soptable source code, introduced Transactions

1984 -> Oracle V4; introduced read consistency, ported to many plathforms, first interopability between PC and server

1986 -> Oracle V5; true client-sever, vax cluster support, distributed queries

1989 -> Oracle V6; OLTP performance enhancements, online backup/recovery, row level locking, plsql language, parallel server

1993 -> Oracle V7; declarative referential integrity, stored procedures and triggers, shared SQL, parallel execution, Advanced replication

1997 -> Oracle V8; Object-relational database, three-tier architecture, partitioning

1999 -> Oracle V8i; Java in database and native java support, XML support, Oracle Internet Directory, Summary management interMedia, Data warehousing enhancements, ported to Linux, Business components for java(BC4J), WebDB introduced(eventually mature into Portal and ApEx)

2001 -> Oracle V9i; Automatic segment space management, Real Apllication Clusters, Internet security enhancements, Data Guard, Advanced globalization support, record-breaking TPC-C benchmark results, 1st to complete 3 terabyte TPC-H world record

2003 -> Oracle V10g; Enterprise Grid Computing, 64-bit Linux with IPF

2005 -> Oracle VXE; free Oracle 10gR2 database

2007 -> Oracle V11g; as announced at Openworld 2006

In a nutshell, Version Date Release Name

Oracle
Release Date
2 June 1979
3 March 1983
4 October 1984
5.0 April 1985
6.0 July 1988
7.0 June 1992
7.1 May 1994
7.2 May 1995
7.3 February 1996
8.0 June 1997 Oracle 8
8.1.5 February 1999 Oracle 8i Release 1
8.1.6 November 1999 Oracle 8i Release 2
8.1.7 August 2000 Oracle 8i Release 3
9.0.1 June 2001 Oracle 9i Release 1
9.2 May 2002 Oracle 9i Release 2
10.1 January 2004 Oracle 10g Release 1
10.2 July 2005 Oracle 10g Release 2