By the early 1990s, Oracle Database was already a recognized leader among commercial database management systems, despite the relative youth of the company itself.
The history of Oracle Corporation
Oracle was founded in June 1977 under the name SDL (Software Development Laboratories) by three programmers: Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates. All three had previously worked at Ampex on a classified project for the US CIA codenamed "Oracle" — the name that would go on to be given to their first database management system.
The first version of Oracle Database appeared in 1979, but for marketing reasons was numbered v2. The system was written in assembly language for PDP-11 computers and ran under the RSX-11 operating system, using just 128 kilobytes of RAM.
The development of Oracle Database by 1993
By 1993, Oracle Database had come a long way:
- 1983 — Oracle v3: The system was rewritten in C, with transaction support added (the COMMIT and ROLLBACK commands). For the first time, the DBMS ran simultaneously on mainframes, minicomputers, and personal computers.
- 1984 — Oracle v4: Tools for managing concurrent operations and multi-version consistent read were introduced.
- 1985 — Oracle v5: A focus on client-server technology, with support for distributed queries.
- 1988 — Oracle v6: Row-level locking and "hot" backup capabilities. The Oracle Forms development environment with the PL/SQL language debuted.
- 1992 — Oracle v7: Support for referential integrity, stored procedures, and triggers — this was the current version in 1993.
Oracle as "cutting-edge" technology in 1993
For Russian enterprises in 1993, Oracle Database really did represent an advanced, "cutting-edge" technology, for several reasons:
In the early 1990s, most Russian organizations were only just beginning the shift from paper-based recordkeeping to computerized accounting, and Oracle offered a fundamentally new approach to data management.
Technical advantages of Oracle v7 (1992-1993):
- A powerful SQL query language
- Support for large volumes of data
- Multi-user access
- Transactional integrity
- Client-server architecture
- Cross-platform support
- Application development tools
- Professional-grade administration
Oracle's position in the DBMS market in 1993
By 1993, Oracle Corporation was already a recognized leader in the enterprise database market. Following its 1986 IPO, the company expanded rapidly, and by the early 1990s its annual revenue exceeded $500 million.
Oracle's main rivals in the relational DBMS market were:
- IBM DB2 — a powerful system for mainframes
- Sybase SQL Server — popular in Unix environments
- Informix — a strong presence on Unix systems
- Microsoft SQL Server — a system just beginning to gain momentum
Deploying Oracle in early-1990s Russia
Deploying Oracle Database at Russian companies in 1993 came with a number of complications:
- The high cost of licenses and hardware
- The need for qualified specialists
- The demand for a serious hardware platform
- The difficulty of localization and adaptation to Russian accounting standards
Even so, Oracle Database offered capabilities unavailable with simple desktop DBMSs like dBASE or Paradox: centralized data storage, multi-user access with tiered permission levels, reliability, and scalability — exactly what growing Russian enterprises needed during a period of economic reform.