Oracle Database

Oracle Database is an Oracle object-relational database management system. Oracle Database is the world’s first DBMS designed specifically for working in the cloud. It introduces for the first time a new multi-rent architecture that simplifies database consolidation in the cloud and allows companies to manage multiple databases “as one” without changing applications.

Oracle Database is designed for efficient deployment based on different types of equipment, from small servers to Oracle Enterprise Grid powerful multi-processor server systems, from single clusters to corporate distributed computing systems. It provides automatic configuration and control that makes it easy and cost-effective to use. Its unique ability to manage all enterprise data – from routine business information operations to dynamic multivariate data analysis (OLAP), XML document operations, distributed/local information management – makes it an ideal choice for applications that handle operational transactions, intelligent information analysis, data storage and content management.

Oracle Database allows users to virtualize the use of hardware – servers and storage systems – and has technologies that allow administrators to securely store and quickly distribute and retrieve data for users and applications running on Grid networks. Oracle Database significantly improves data processing performance and includes convenient administration tools.

Oracle Database Development Chronicle

2019 – Overview of key features in Oracle Database 19c

On April 25, 2019 it became known that the Oracle Corporation presented the key functions included in Oracle Database 19c. The version itself was introduced on Oracle Live SQL in early 2019.

The Automatic Indexing function creates indices automatically using machine learning algorithms, and tests have shown that it often does this task better than humans.

«This database can determine the optimal set of indices. Their creation takes into account the data structure, data itself and requests. This means that the database can be created and used without any indexes at all, or with a very small set of indexes. The database will analyze resource-intensive queries to understand which indexes are potentially required, check the usefulness of selected candidates, and then build the indexes itself, all in less time than creating the indexes manually.

Dominic Giles, General Manager of Oracle Products for Oracle Database»

This function will also work with the database for which the indices have already been built. In this case automatic indexing can help in fine-tuning the database index set. After creating the indexes, the database constantly checks their use and deletes unnecessary ones. This is important because indexes accumulate over time – large commercial applications running Oracle Database can create thousands of such indexes over the years.

«They are often created for reports or batch jobs that are no longer needed. It’s not that harmless, because indexes increase the database’s need for computing and storage resources.

Dominic Giles »

This feature of Oracle Database 19c helps you use a backup database, a mirror copy of a working database designed for disaster recovery, more efficiently.

For this purpose, in Oracle Database 11g, Oracle offered the Oracle Active Data Guard option, with which you can open a backup database for reading, create reports on it and execute backups. Oracle Database 19c has an additional Active Data Guard DML Redirect feature that allows you to modify data in the backup database.

«One of the reasons for this innovation is that many applications need to not only read data, but also make some entries in the database when creating reports. With the help of Active Data Guard DML Redirect the record operations are immediately and transparently redirected to the primary database and after entering it are replicated to the backup database. From the user’s point of view, it looks as if he is updating the data in the backup database.

Dominic Giles »

Active Data Guard DML Redirect works equally well when locating a backup database both on-premise and in the cloud, and when both the primary and backup databases are executed in the cloud.

Hybrid Partitioned Tables allow you to combine within a single table both sections that are located within a standard table space, and sections that are placed on external cheap storage systems outside the database.

All the Oracle DBMS analytics capabilities can be used when the data is placed on an external low-cost storage system. These storage systems can be located both in the local client data center and in the cloud. Some sections of the table placed in the database of your data center may lie in the cloud. Data outside the Oracle Database is read-only and does not need a regular backup, but can be accessed from the Oracle Database.

JSON support appeared in Oracle Database 12c, where native JSON document storage and SQL access were implemented. It has been further developed in version 18c with the introduction of JSON document analytics.

Oracle Database 19c now supports Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) application programming interfaces for Java, Python, C and Node.js.

«You can work with a wide range of NoSQL APIs, which get strings from JSON documents in the database. The overall performance of a data window or data warehouse can drop dramatically with frequent requests with very high CPU and I/O resource requirements. Oracle Database 19c can automatically quarantine these queries and block their execution if the resource consumption exceeds the thresholds specified for them.

Dominic Giles »

Oracle Database provides stability for applications and local database installations.

«Stability is the goal of Oracle Database 19c – a release with long-term support. Local DBMS update cycles of our clients are quite long and many clients have been waiting for the release of Oracle Database 19c to move to it from Oracle Database 11g or Oracle Database 12c.

Dominic Giles »

2018 – Amazon wants to give up Oracle software. Larry Ellison says it’s impossible

On August 7, 2018, Oracle co-founder Larry Allison commented on rumors about Amazon’s plans to abandon Oracle software. According to the businessman, Amazon is unlikely to be able to do it, as neither the company nor Oracle’s competitors have managed to do it before.

2015 – Oracle Database Cloud

On November 18, 2015, Oracle Corporation released Oracle Database Cloud products that complement the Oracle Cloud Platform portfolio of services for deploying reliable, scalable, secure solutions and database-based applications in the cloud.

Critical capabilities are now available:

• clustering for fault tolerance and scalability on demand,
• zero-loss disaster recovery
• Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service.

Oracle also introduced a free service that allows database administrators and developers to test the capabilities of Oracle Database in the Oracle Cloud environment without financial costs or risk.

Oracle Database Cloud features:

• Critical Application Platform: The Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service provides unrivaled scalability, performance and availability of Oracle Database. Enterprises can take full advantage of Oracle Exadata Database Machine to run mission-critical applications and consolidate databases in the Oracle Cloud environment.
• Availability and scalability: Enterprises can leverage Oracle’s database clustering solution in the cloud. Oracle Real Application Clusters, part of the Oracle Database Cloud Service and Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service, provides on-demand scalability and database resiliency.
• Disaster Recovery: Now you can deploy a real-time cloud-based disaster recovery solution that protects your Oracle databases in the event of a site or region-wide failure. The Oracle Active Data Guard product, which is part of Oracle Database Cloud Service and Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service, provides continuous replication of databases deployed directly in the enterprise or in the Oracle Cloud environment to the active backup database in Oracle Cloud with zero data loss. Also the enterprises can more effectively use resources and increase productivity, having moved operations of preparation of reports, performance of special inquiries and backup on active reserve database Oracle Database.
• Development and Testing Services: Oracle offers free trials that developers can leverage to create enterprise-level, enterprise-cloud applications and web-based applications. Developers are offered a full range of services for development/testing with Oracle Database Cloud, including a new free service and access to Oracle Java Cloud Service, Oracle Database Backup Service and Oracle Storage Cloud Service.

Oracle Database Cloud portfolio of services

Oracle Database Cloud offers an extensive portfolio of cloud services to provide capacity and service levels to meet the needs of developers, small businesses and global enterprises. Databases can be deployed in the cloud in minutes, offering full local database compatibility and built-in security with end-to-end encryption. Customers can choose Oracle managed or fully automated administration that includes automatic application of patch and service packs, backup and recovery. As a result, IT services can significantly increase flexibility and reduce costs.

• Oracle Database Cloud Service: Companies can deploy a fully managed database for rapid development and deployment of enterprise-level applications, or an automated cloud database to support mission-critical enterprise applications. A wide range of Oracle Database features and options are available to maximize performance, availability, security and consolidation.
• Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service: Enterprises can now deploy critical production OLTP databases and data warehouses in the Oracle Cloud environment. This service runs on the Oracle Exadata platform, used at thousands of sites around the world. Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service has built-in performance and availability tools such as Oracle Multitenant, Oracle Database In-Memory, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Active Data Guard, InfiniBand Fabric and Smart Flash Cache.
• Oracle Database Backup Service: The Oracle Database Cloud family also includes a scalable, low-cost solution that allows enterprises to store Oracle database backups deployed directly in the enterprise or in the Oracle Cloud environment without having to worry about shrinking backup windows, data loss or incomplete recovery. Backing up databases in Oracle Cloud can be done using the same process that is used for local disk or tape backup. Data is encrypted at source and mirrored three times in the cloud for security and recovery in all situations.

2013 – Among the world DBMS market leaders

For 2013, the global market for corporate database management systems (DBMS) is dominated by the traditional three products: IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. Over 80% of the DBMS market has been controlled by three manufacturers for many years: IBM, Oracle and Microsoft.

Oracle9i – DBMS for medium-sized companies
The Oracle9i DBMS kernel is a database server, which is supplied in one of the four editions depending on the scale of the information system within which it is supposed to be used.

Oracle9i Database Enterprise Edition (corporate edition) is offered for Internet (public) systems and systems of large organization (enterprise) scale, for which there is a whole set of options, which architecturally and functionally expand server capabilities. Oracle9i Database Standard Edition (Standard Edition) product is aimed at a medium size organization or a division within a large organization (workgroup).

Oracle9i Database Personal Edition is available for personal use, and Oracle9i Database Lite for mobile communication systems and small offices. In standard, personal and mobile editions, the main emphasis is on low cost, easy installation and maintenance. All Oracle server options are based on the same source code and are functionally identical, except for some additional options that are required for specific configurations (for example, to support cluster architectures, the Oracle9i Real Application Clusters option is required).

The main advantage of this approach to DBMS building is the code identity for all database server variants. For all computer platforms and architectures there is a single Oracle DBMS supplied in different versions that behaves identically and provides the same functionality regardless of the platform on which it is installed.

One of the main Oracle DBMS characteristics is the system functioning on most platforms. Including on large computers, UNIX-servers, personal computers, etc.

Another important feature is Oracle support for all possible architectures, including symmetric multi-processor systems, clusters, systems with mass parallelism, etc. The significance of these characteristics for large scale organizations, where many computers of different models and manufacturers are used, is evident. In such conditions, the success factor is the maximum possible typification of the proposed solutions, with the aim of significantly reducing the cost of software ownership. Unification of database management systems is one of the most significant steps towards achieving this goal.

Oracle support of the majority of popular computer platforms and architectures is achieved due to a rigid DBMS code development scheme. Development of server products is performed by a single division of Oracle Corporation, changes are made centrally. After that, all versions are thoroughly tested in the basic version and then transferred to all platforms, where they are also thoroughly tested. The possibility to port Oracle is provided by the specific structure of the source code of the database server. Approximately 80% of Oracle’s programming code is in C programming language and is platform-independent. Approximately 20% of the code, which is the server core, is implemented in machine-dependent languages; and this part of the code is, of course, rewritten for different platforms.

One of the distinctive features of the Oracle server is the ability to store and process various types of data. This functionality is integrated into the DBMS kernel and supported by the interMedia module within Oracle Database. It provides work with text documents, including various types of search, including contextual; work with graphic images of more than 20 formats; work with audio and video information.

Oracle DBMS not only provides an extended set of built-in data types, but also allows using Object Option to construct new data types with specification of access methods to them. This means in fact that developers get a tool that allows them to build structured data types that directly display objects in the subject area.

Oracle includes many different components and modules, here are some of them:

The interMedia module provides support for all data types, including search operations for large text documents of various formats.

The Oracle Enterprise Manager component is a versatile database administration tool with a user-friendly graphical interface that allows the database administrator to perform a wide range of operations on multiple Oracle databases, including creation, modification and deletion of any objects within each database.

The Advanced Replication Option module allows you to perform data replication in a wide range of ways, including synchronous, asynchronous, cascading and other types of replication.

Oracle Workflow module is a tool for automation of standard business procedures of the organization, for development of workflow management procedures. It offers advanced capabilities to automate the passage and processing of any type of information and formalize complex business procedures and information processing algorithms.

One of the key features of the Oracle database server is the message queue storage and processing mechanism called Oracle Advanced Queuing (AQ). It comes with a database server and does not need to be licensed separately. The AQ component belongs to the Message Oriented Middleware class. Presence of such component allows to construct on the basis of a server the full functional infrastructure for processing of messages and excludes necessity of acquisition for this purpose of additional means of the third firms (such as IBM MQ Series), providing, at the same time, communication with them in heterogeneous environments at the expense of product Oracle Messaging Gateways.

Since Oracle8i, the server (all editions) includes a virtual Java machine (JServer Enterprise Edition) .

The Oracle Obects for OLE component provides access to databases of Oracle applications developed in C++, Microsoft Visual Basic, OLE 2.0. Full support for Visual Basic’s macro definitions language allows you to receive data from Oracle directly in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

2012 – Editions: from Express Edition to Enterprise Edition

For 2012, the company offers the following DBMS editions:

• Oracle Express Edition (XE): This is an entry level edition. It is free for development, deployment and distribution. It is also an excellent choice for developers, students and small organizations. Oracle XE edition is very easy to install and administer, can be installed on almost any computer, with any number of processors and memory capacity. However, there are some limitations, namely, the amount of user data cannot exceed 4 GB, and Oracle XE cannot use more than 1 GB of RAM. At the moment, this edition is not accompanied by the Oracle support service – My Oracle Support (formerly Metalink), but often answers to your questions can be found in the forums devoted to Oracle and development for this DBMS.
• Oracle Personal edition (PE): This edition supports single user development and deployment environments that require full compatibility with Oracle Database Standard Edition One, Oracle Database Standard Edition and Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. Oracle PE contains all the components, options, and functionality that are included in the Enterprise Edition except for the Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) option. The downside of this edition is that it is only available for the Windows platform (Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003/32-bit and 64-bit versions), also it does not include the Management Pack.
• Oracle Standard Edition One (SEO): good price/performance ratio, suitable for workgroups, individual departments and Web application creation. This edition is recommended for use in environments ranging from a dedicated server, for small businesses, to distributed environments of almost any size. Oracle Database SEO contains everything you need to build business critical applications.
• Oracle Standard Edition (SE): Offers a low-cost alternative for small and medium businesses, or business level applications, that want the full power of Oracle. This edition contains all the benefits of Oracle SEO, plus support for large machines and clustering using Real Application Clusters (free in this edition). Previously, RAC was not included in the Standard Edition, until Oracle Database version 10g.
• Oracle Enterprise Edition (EE): Is the most expensive and feature-rich edition, delivering the highest performance, availability, scalability and security critical to business applications compared to other editions. For example, OLTP applications, data warehouses with high number of calls, distributed applications. Oracle Database EE includes all available Oracle Database components and allows you to expand your functionality by purchasing additional packages and components.

Licensing Policy

For 2012 Oracle software products (“Programs”) are distributed by granting licenses for their use.

Technical support for licensed software is provided for one year and is purchased together with the licenses. At the end of the technical support period, it can be extended for another year.

The cost of licenses and technical support is calculated based on the Oracle Global Price List. Licensed software is provided via electronic communication channels or on CD-ROM media. Licensing the Software means acquiring the rights to use it, not purchasing the Software products themselves.

The Oracle database can be quite large, so someone has to manage this system.

Support for programming languages

As of 2012, the following programming languages are supported by the DBMS:

• ZpC,
• C++,
• Java,
• COBOL,
• PL/SQL and
• Visual Basic.

There are also a number of Pro pre-compilers that allow to include SQL and MN / SQL in C, C ++, COBOL or FORTRAN application programs. Support for ODBC is provided through Oracle’s ODBC Driver. There is the Oracle Call Interface (OCI), which is an application programming interface (API) for third generation languages.

Oracle Database can be hacked by any user

Databases Oracle can be hacked by any user, such conclusions were presented by experts on September 20, 2012 at a conference on security in Argentina, said TechCrunch.

An analyst of AppSec Inc. Esteban Martinez Fayo presented the concept of attack on Oracle databases, according to which anyone who has access to user names and authentication protocol can take advantage of a breach in the product of the corporation.

This is not the first time AppSec Inc has reported the possibility of hacking Oracle products. Earlier the company reported a breach in May 2010, the error was recorded by the vendor in mid-2011. However, in the last few months Oracle has identified several serious shortcomings in the security of its systems. Against this background, experts predict a possible surge of hacking activity with respect to the company’s products.

According to Esteban Martinez Fayo? Oracle does not yet plan to respond in any way to a new breach in the product. “They never fixed the current versions, so versions 11.1 and 11.2 could potentially be hacked,” he said.

The leakage occurs during the authentication phase – there is no intermediate phase to provide additional security. IS experts advise system administrators to pay attention to this and develop ways to eliminate gaps in companies.

In the second decade of September 2012, Salesforce.com announced a single sign-on option for enterprise applications on Dreamforce. Thus, the emergence of a new gap in Oracle makes security and identification issues even more relevant.

1992: DBMS Oracle 7 release

In addition to the overall increase in I/O efficiency, CPU usage and memory operation, the Oracle 7 version had a number of innovative architectural solutions: a shared SQL cache on the server (the server recognizes SQL statements sent by clients that have previously been analyzed and compiled and are now in cache memory, saving time for analysis, optimization and translation, as well as the memory required to store the SQL statement) and a shared server process pool instead of a separate process for each process. In the area of database administration, a number of innovations have also been introduced: a mirror transaction log, dynamic creation of data logs, the ANALYZE command that allows you to collect statistics on the use of tables, indices and other physical objects (these statistics are used by the query optimizer), user profiles for the use of system resources: CPU, I / O, etc.

Version 7 has fully implemented the declarative limitations of referential integrity in accordance with ANSI/ISO standards. Within these limitations (primary and external keys) the user can specify cascading of records related to some primary key. PL/SQL procedures can be described at the database schema level (stored procedures) and called by any application, other procedures and triggers. Linked procedures can be grouped into packages and use common variables and definitions. The values of variables declared at the package level are saved throughout the user session and can be shared by the package procedures and functions. Another important innovation was the database triggers.

A trigger is a pair (event+action), where the event is the deletion/billing/updating of table records, and the action (trigger body) is the PL/SQL procedure executed when the event is executed. Triggers can be defined at the statement level (DELETE, INSERT, UPDATE) or at the individual line level (FOR-EACH-ROW-triggers, which, in addition, can work with old and new values of lines). With the help of triggers you can implement complex rules of integrity control, access rights, output values, etc. Security and integrity management has been greatly simplified by the introduction of roles. The role is a set of rights of access to database objects (INSERT, UPDATE, SELECT, etc.) and system rights (CREATE TABLE, ALTER SYSTEM, etc.).

Having defined a role, a database administrator can use a single command to give the user privileges to work with some application. The efficiency of distributed query execution has been improved due to global optimization: in version 7, the optimizer has information about the indices and statistics of remote tables, and, for example, the connection speed of tables located in different nodes of the network is significantly increased due to the fact that only rows corresponding to the rows of the local table are selected from remote tables.

1988: DBMS Oracle 6 release

The developers of version 6 sought to create a tool for building large-scale information systems focused on the processing of transactions in real time. Sequence generators and write level lockouts were introduced, which together with the “read consistency” model meant that the read and write processes no longer lock each other (only the write process goes into a waiting state when trying to update a table row that is already controlled by another write process). At the same time, Oracle became the first multi-user network database server for OS/2, Xenix, Banyan Vines and Macintosh.

In version 6, fundamentally new opportunities were laid out, which were fully realized later. First, SQL statements could be used in conjunction with PL/SQL statements of the procedural language and sent to the server for execution as anonymous procedures. Secondly, the same language PL/SQL has been entered in language of the fourth generation SQL*Forms as means of programming of appendices (in version 7 expanded language PL/SQL became means of the description of procedures and database triggers). Thirdly, in the description of the database schema at the syntactic level, declarative definitions of reference integrity limitations have been introduced (according to the ANSI/ISO standard).

1986: DBMS Oracle 5.1 release

In 1986, version 5.1 allowed distributed requests for the first time – the request could address data physically placed in different nodes. Several interacting servers could create the illusion of a single logical database for the user of many physically separated databases.

1985: Oracle 5.0 DBMS

In 1985, Oracle released the DBMS version on the market: 5.0, in which the client/server architecture was first introduced and a SQL*Net program supporting heterogeneous environments was implemented.

1983: Oracle 3 release

The next version, Oracle 3, released on the market in 1983, was already fully written in C. The decision to use C and support one set of source codes was the key to solving the problem of Oracle portability to a wide range of platforms. Changes were made to the SQL language, the efficiency was significantly improved, the system architecture was extended and atomic execution of SQL statements and transactions was introduced (SQL statements were either executed completely or not executed at all, respectively, the transaction was either completed successfully for all database changes or rolled back all its changes).

With the appearance of the third version of Oracle became multiplatform, that is, there is an opportunity to install this DBMS on a variety of computer systems (there were at least 20 of them then), its popularity began to grow even faster.

In version 4, the reliability of Oracle was significantly increased, the system was transferred to large computers in VM and MVS, as well as to a personal computer with 640 kilobytes of RAM. A database access control model was implemented, which guaranteed that the query result did not conflict with the database state at the beginning of the query (this eliminated a known contradiction between the processes of reading and writing).

1979: DBMS Oracle 2 release

In June 1979, the first Allison system – Oracle 2 – was released. Allison was more talented than Bill Gates in marketing terms. Unlike the founder of Microsoft, who called the first version of Windows – Windows 1.0, he showed marketing savvy, so the light immediately saw the second version of the product. It was supposed to send a message to customers that the system is reliable and even passed the test of time. Allison can be understood: he did not have the IBM approval that Gates had. Even the opposite: Allison was creating a product that could become a competitor to IBM solutions.

The main competitive advantage of DBMS Oracle was the high speed of processing huge amounts of information, which then was noted by all experts. Unlike System R, which required a powerful supercomputer, the mainframe, Oracle 2 was able to process information on much more modest machines. This contributed to the incredible spread of Allison’s brainchild in the early 1980s.

Oracle has historically been the first and one of the most advanced client/server architecture implementations. Openness (portability + scalability) has always been the main idea of Oracle developers. The company’s success on the DBMS market was certainly a direct consequence of the system’s openness.

The second version of Oracle (the first one did not exist at all) worked on a mini-computer PDP-11 by Digital Equipment in the RSX-11 operating environment. Most of Oracle was written in the PDP-11 assembler, and the individual components were written in the new C language for that time. Already in those days the system was ported and operated in other PDP-11 operating environments: IAS, RSTS and UNIX. At the same time it was decided to port Oracle to the new VMS. Thanks to this DBMS Oracle has occupied a vast niche of corporate information systems in the rapidly growing VAX market.

Then the strongest impression on the users was made by the full implementation of the new SQL query language – subqueries, connection operation and non-procedure – due to which programming productivity has increased many times. Standard SQL (IBM) has been extended by CONNECT BY statement, allowing to process tree structures, that becomes unique for SQL-systems.

Of course, the second version of Oracle was extremely simple – in particular, the concept of transaction was not supported, and if there was a failure during the database update, the database state could become incorrect, so users had to make frequent database backups to avoid information loss.

1977: The foundation of Oracle for the development of a relational DBMS

The story of Oracle began in Silicon Valley, California, USA. In 1977, a young programmer Larry Allison dropped out of Yale to start his own business. Larry Ellison, who had only $1,200 at his disposal at the time, persuaded Bob Meiner and Ed Oates, his former colleagues, to start their own company. Before that, all three had been working on a CIA project called… Oracle.

On June 16, 1977, Ed Oates, Bob Meiner and Larry Ellison founded Software Development Laboratories in California, USA, soon renamed initially Relational Software Inc. Young programmers, whose total investment in the business amounted to $2,000, began developing a database management system (DBMS), built on the principles of relational algebra.

Later, all complex DBMS became relational, but when in 1970 IBM research laboratory employee Edgar Codd proposed a new method for organizing databases, many specialists had doubts that it would even justify itself. Therefore, until the mid-1970s, information in databases was distributed according to the old hierarchical or “tree” principle, which is still used to represent files in PCs.

IBM, however, financed the creation of a prototype system based on the principles proposed by the Code, and in 1976 the project System R, which inspired the future founders of Oracle to create a relational DBMS.

Platforms

As of 2013, Oracle DBMS supports more than 80 operating environment options in a wide range, including IBM mainframes, DEC VAX, UNIX, Windows mini-computers and many other platforms.

Local

Oracle database is ported to a large number of platforms: Linux x86, Linux x86-64, Linux on zSeries, Linux Itanium, Linux on POWER, Microsoft Windows (32-bit), Windows NT (x64), Windows NT (64-bit Itanium), Solaris x86, Solaris AMD64/EM64T, Solaris SPARC (64-bit), AIX5L, HP-UX PA-RISC, HP-UX Itanium, HP Tru64 UNIX, HP OpenVMS Alpha, IBM z/OS, Mac OS X Server.

for Linux x86

• September 1998 – Oracle 8.0 (8.0.5)
• February 23, 1999 – Oracle 8.0 (8.0.5.1.0)
• November 22, 2000 – Oracle 8i Release 3 (8.1.7.0.1)
• March 25, 2003 – Oracle 9i Release 2 (9.2.0.4)
• December 21, 2004 – Oracle 10g Release 1 (10.1.0.3)
• July 2, 2005 – Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1)
• August 10, 2007 – Oracle 11g Release 1 (11.1.0.6)
• September 1, 2009 – Oracle 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1)

for Linux x86-64

• October 16, 2007 – Oracle 11g Release 1 (11.1.0.6)
• September 1, 2009 – Oracle 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1)
• for Solaris x86
• May 14, 1999 – Oracle 8i Release 1 (8.1.5) for Intel UNIX (DG/UX Intel, SCO UnixWare, Solaris Intel)
• for Solaris x86-64
• March 23, 2006 – Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1)
• November 25, 2009 – Oracle 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1)
• for Solaris SPARC 64-bit
• November 6, 2009 – Oracle 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1)
• for Windows x86
• March 1997 – Oracle 7 (7.3.3) for Windows NT 3.51/4.0
• October 1997 – Oracle 7 (7.3.4) for Windows NT 3.51/4.0
• July 1, 1998 – Oracle 8.0 (8.0.5) for Windows NT
• March 10, 1999 – Oracle 8i Release 1 (8.1.5) for Windows NT
• September 20, 1999 – Oracle 8.0 (8.0.6) for Windows NT
• January 2000 – Oracle 8i Release 2 (8.1.6) for Windows NT
• November 16, 2000 – Oracle 8i Release 3 (8.1.7) for Windows NT
• May 14, 2002 – Oracle 9i Release 2 (9.2.0.1) for Windows 32-bit
• March 26, 2004 – Oracle 10g Release 1 (10.1.0.2) for Windows 32-bit
• September 7, 2005 – Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1) for Windows 32-bit
• October 15, 2007 – Oracle 11g Release 1 (11.1.0.6) for Windows 32-bit
• April 5, 2010 – Oracle 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1) for Windows 32-bit[3].
• for Windows x86-64
• April 16, 2003 – Oracle 9i Release 2 (9.2.0.2.1) for Windows 64-bit Itanium 2 Systems
• October 31, 2005 – Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1) for Windows x64
• November 7, 2007 – Oracle 11g Release 1 (11.1.0.6) for Windows x64
• April 2, 2010 – Oracle 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1) for Windows x64