Skip to main content

My life with Oracle



As an undergraduate student studying computer science I became very interested in databases.

At the time, Relational databases were a subject for books, especially C.J Date’s Introduction to relational databases. There was a chapter on relational algebra.
I chose to implement a working version of relational algebra as my final year project. It sounds easy, but I decided that for convenience I would develop the project on a micro computer (PC), using Pascal.
The main issue was having only 64kb of memory.

Some time later, and after a few job changes, I landed a software development job with an American company, CINCOM. They developed and sold database software for IBM mainframes and DEC VAX computers.
The UK office was responsible for development of the non-mainframe versions of the software; VAX, IBM PC, Solaris, etc. What made me decide to join was that they had just started a project in trying to enter the relational database market.

My project was to write a SQL interface to the old database engine. Everybody wanted SQL. By this time Oracle was (I think) at version 5, and taking the world by storm. Even IBM had to license it,
because their own SQL offering was still in research, although they had kicked off the rush to relational databases, with System/R.

Like many of the best internet technologies, Oracle caught a break through a government agency (the CIA in this case). They wanted a more searchable database.
In those days IBM offered IMS a very programatic hierarchical database, which had little to no ad hoc query capabilities.
Larry Ellison and a colleague won the contract to provide the required system for ‘project Oracle’. They had read papers about relational theory, and decided this was the best way to go.

In the end, the CIA didn’t pursue the project past the research stage. But Larry Ellison continued to develop it, and brought it to market.
He called the company Oracle after its first product and the CIA project name. And as computers got smaller and more powerful, Oracle got bigger.

Now in the 21st century my interest in oracle products has not waned.   Every major release is a  major ground breaking application of technology from containerisation to the use of the cloud.
At my company, we use the full power of Oracle in our projects. We use OracleXe for small databases using oracle SQL dialect, and Oracle12c multi tenant in development and production environments
to make best use of server resources. We also have projects running on Oracle EXADATA.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A whale of a time - what’s so good about Docker?

A good idea often has many parents. This is how it is for Docker. Docker looks like a trending, shiny new piece of technology, and a required part of a software developer’s vocabulary. To be used liberally. But the idea behind Docker - containerisation - is not new and the same concept is used even in proprietary software. Docker does appear to have the most accessible implementation to date, though. Their logo, a whale loaded up with containers is a perfect image for this company and its main product. Those of us that have used Solaris may recognise these ‘containers’ as ‘zones’, which have been in Solaris for some time. Mainframe people may even see a glimmer of IBM MVS. Let me describe the main idea behind Docker. For maybe 10 years, people have been using Virtual machines (VM). Each VM contains a complete copy of an Operating System (OS). This is flexible, in that each VM can have a different OS and be completely isolated from all other VMs running on the same server....
Post a Comment
Read more
A whale of a time - what’s so good about Docker? A good idea often has many parents. This is how it is for Docker.  Docker looks like a trending, shiny new piece of technology, and a required part of a software developer’s vocabulary. To be used liberally.  But the idea behind Docker - containerisation - is not new and the same concept is used even in proprietary software. Docker does appear to have the most accessible implementation to date, though.  Their logo, a whale loaded up with containers is a perfect image for this company and its main product. Those of us that have used Solaris may recognise these ‘containers’ as ‘zones’,  which have been in Solaris for some time. Mainframe people may even see a glimmer of IBM MVS. Let me describe the main idea behind Docker.  For maybe 10 years, people have been using Virtual machines (VM). Each VM contains a complete copy of an Operating System (OS). This is flexible, in that each VM can have a different  OS an...
Post a Comment
Read more
My life with Oracle As an undergraduate student studying computer science I became very interested in databases.   At the time, Relational databases were a subject for books, especially C.J Date’s Introduction to relational databases. There was a chapter on relational algebra.  I chose to implement a working version of relational algebra as my final year project. It sounds easy, but I decided that for convenience I would develop the project on a micro computer (PC), using Pascal.  The main issue was having only 64kb of memory.  Some time later, and after a few job changes, I landed a software development job with an American company, CINCOM. They developed and sold database software for IBM mainframes and DEC VAX computers.  The UK office was responsible for development of the non-mainframe versions of the software; VAX, IBM PC, Solaris, etc. What made me decide to join was that they had just started a project in trying to enter the relational database market. ...
Post a Comment
Read more