Monday 17 August 2015

Versions of Oracle with features/History of Oracle


Hi friends, once again welcome back to Oracle Gang. Today I am here with new topic “Versions of Oracle with features/History of Oracle”. Today we will discuss all the versions of oracle with what feature introduced in that versions. So let’s start...

Before going on versions of oracle let’s see the some history of oracle. Founded in August 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, Ed Oates and Bruce Scott, Oracle was initially named after "Project Oracle" a project for one of their clients, the C.I.A, and the company that developed Oracle was dubbed "Systems Development Labs", or SDL.   Although they may not have realized it at the time, these four men would change the history of database management forever.
Oracle release 1 (1978): - In 1978 SDL was renamed Relational Software Inc. (RSI) to market their new database.
Oracle release 2 (1979): - The first commercial RDBMS was built using PDP-11 assembler language. In 1982 there was another change of the company’s name, from RSI to Oracle Systems Corporation so as to match its popular database name.  The current company name comes from a CIA project that Larry Ellison had previously worked on code named “Oracle”.

Oracle release 3 (1983): - The Oracle version 3 was developed in 1983. This version was assembled using C programming language and could run in mainframes, minicomputers, and PCs’ or any hardware with a C compiler. It supported the execution of SQL statements and transactions. This version also included new options of pre-join data to increase Oracle optimization. 
 
Oracle release 4 (1984): - Oracle version 4 included support for reading consistency, which made it much faster than any previous version.  Oracle version 4 also brought us the introduction of the export/import utilities and the report writer, which allows one the ability to create a report based on a query. The main feature introduced in this version are commit and rollback.

Oracle release 5 (1985): - With the introduction of version 5 in 1985, Oracle addressed the increasing use of the internet in business computing.  This version was equipped with the capability to connect clients? Software through a network to a database server.  The Clustering Technology was introduced in this version as well and Oracle became the pioneer using this new concept which would later be known as Oracle Real Application Cluster in version 9i.  Oracle version 5 added some new security features such as auditing, which would help determine who and when someone accessed the database.
Oracle version 5.1 was launched in 1986 and allowed for supporting distributed queries. Later that same year Oracle released SQL*Plus, a tool that offers ad hoc data access and report writing.  1986 also brought the release of SQL*Forms, an application generator and run-time system with facilities for simple application deployment.

Oracle release 6 (1988): - The PL/SQL language came with Oracle version 6 in 1988.  This version 
provided a host of new features including the support of OLTP high-speed systems, hot backup capability and row level locking which locks only the row or rows being used during a writing operation, rather than locking an entire table.  Prior to the hot backup feature, database administrators were required to shut down the database to back it up.  Once the hot backup feature was introduced, DBA’s could do a backup while the database was still online.


Oracle release 7 (1992): - 1992 was a memorable year for Oracle.  The company announced Oracle version 7, which was the culmination of four years of hard work and two years of customer testing before release to market.  This version of Oracle provided a vast array of new features and capabilities in areas such as security, administration, development, and performance. In this version oracle also introduce many useful features like:

  • Varchar2 datatype
  • Stored procedures
  • Functions
  • Packages
  • Trigger

Oracle release 8 (1997): - The Oracle 8 Database was launched in 1997 and was designed to work with Oracle's network computer (NC). Main features introduced in this version are:
  • Table partitioning
  • User define datatype
  • LOBs (Large Objects): - This is very important feature because before this we can’t store media file like audio, video etc. in database. But after introducing LOBs, Oracle started supporting media file.

Oracle release 8i (1998): - Just one year later Oracle released Oracle 8i which was the first database to support Web technologies such as Java and HTTP.  In 2000 Oracle 8i Parallel Server was working with Linux which eliminated costly downtime. Main features of this version are:

  • Hierarchical query
  • SQLJ (SQL Java)
  • XML

Oracle release 9i (2001): - Oracle Real Application Cluster came with Oracle 9i Database in 2001. This feature provides software for clustering and high availability in Oracle database environments. Main features and query introduced in this version are:
  • Insert all & merge commands
  • Timestamp datatype
  • OLAP features
  • ANSI joins
  • Case statement

Oracle release 10g (2003): - Although Oracle 9i had only been in the market for two years, Oracle launched version 10g in 2003.  The release of 10g brought us the introduction to Grid Computing technology.  Data centers could now share hardware resources, thus lowering the cost of computing infrastructure. In this version two main features are introduce that are:
  • Flashback
  • Regular expressions

Oracle release 11g (2011): - Oracle 11g was released on July 11th 2007. This version introduced more features than any other in Oracle history.  This version includes:

  • Oracle Database Replay, a tool that captures SQL statements and lets you replay them all in another database to test the changes before you actually apply then on a production database;
  • Transaction Management using Log Miner and Flashback Data Archive to get DML statements from redo log files;
  • Virtual Column Partitioning;
  • Case sensitive passwords;
  • Online Patching;
  • Parallel Backups on same file using RMAN and many others.

Oracle release 12c (2013): - This is the newest version of oracle. From this version oracle started cloud services. Here c stands for cloud. Some of the main feature introduced in this version are:


  • Oracle Database In-Memory
  • Oracle Big Data SQL
  • Oracle JSON Document Store
  • Oracle REST Data Services
  • Improvements to Oracle Multitenant
  • Advanced Index Compression
  • Zone Maps
  • Approximate Count Distinct
  • Attribute Clustering
  • Full Database Caching
  • Rapid Home Provisioning


We will know about each feature in details in upcoming post. Till that keep visiting this blog....

 

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