Concept in Definition ABC
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
By Guillem Alsina González, in Sep. 2016
Known above all for its database solutions, although its Catalogue of products goes well beyond.
Oracle was founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Ed Oates, and Bob Miner in Silicon Valley
The first of them, Larry Ellison, still holds power in the company from his position as CEO, being also a prominent character in the technological world.
Oracle started out as a consulting firm for software called SDL, which quickly won a contract with the CIA (yes, the spy agency) to create a data management system that they dubbed Oracle.
The success of this product, compatible with the language SQL and the relational database model proposed by Codd, makes the company turn mainly in this area.
Thanks to the fact that its databases and attached programs were developed in C language, which is portable between various operating systems and architectures, Oracle can launch its solutions for platforms such as VAX / VMS, UNIX or, more go ahead, Windows, thus taking over the market for database servers.
Currently, in this segment it is one of the leaders together with IBM (DB2) and Microsoft (SQL Server).
In addition to databases, Oracle also offers solutions in other fields such as application servers, content management, ...
Collaboration suite with shared calendars among other functionalities, CRM, ERP, and even environments and languages of programming, since many of the company's products are parameterizable and adaptable by a programmer to meet specific needs.
When it acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009, it also got into operating systems and hardware
The Sun Microsystems brand ended up diluting and disappearing, remaining only for the memory, but its legacy in the form of products it was maintained by Oracle (which interested him, of course).
Among the most notable products Oracle inherited from Sun were its Solaris platform, which gave the company entry into the world of operating systems, thus combining your database solutions with a platform that you can call as own.
Also Java is a tool very powerful, cross-platform programming language.
And the hardware, a field in which Oracle debuted thanks to Sun, with corporate-grade servers aimed at the execution of high-performance solutions in the field of databases and systems information.
Here are some fun facts, such as mentions of Oracle in a well-known movie
- In the film Iron Man 3, the protagonist Toni Stark / Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), refers several times to "the Oracle cloud" when he works with his super computer. It is a tactic of product placement: advertising more or less disguised in a movie or television series.
- Oracle also names (and sponsors) a racing team that won the Copa América in 2010 and 2013. Larry Ellison is fond of sailing, as well as aviation (he has, among other airplanes, two jets military).
- One of the first computers was called ORACLE (Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine acronym).
- Steve Jobs was a photographer at Larry Ellison's fourth wedding, as the two were personal friends.
- It is considered the first company in the world in the field of databases, and the seventh at the level of technology companies.
Photos: Fotolia - undrey / Rawpixel
Topics in Oracle