Re: Why Oracle is called Oracle

On 06/03/2016 04:42 PM, Robert Freeman wrote:
>
> I am sure that we have all heard that Oracle started with a secret
> project called Oracle… but why is the name Oracle really applicable to
> this RDBMS?
>
> How about this as a suggestion:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_machine
>
> Perhaps here, we have an answer to the question, why does Oracle have
> everything in it, including the kitchen sink.
>
> What better way to be a true black box than to include the kitchen sink… J
>

I thought that it was called after the Oracle of Delphi, an early leader in the decision support systems who was also sometimes giving interesting results, just like Oracle RDBMS. Probably the most famous is the answer to the question what will happen if he attacks Persians by the Lydian king Croesus. And the Oracle replied that one great empire would fall if he attacked Persians. And it did: his own empire fell. There are more commonalities than that: Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi was also using SQL to deduce her prophecies. SQL, in her case, meant: Said Quixotically on Laurel, because she was inhaling vapors made with laurel leaves, which have mild hallucinogenic properties, to make her prophecies. During my long tenure as an Oracle DBA, I've seen many SQL statements for which I assumed that they must have been written using laurel leaves or some even stronger stuff. In my mind, there is an unbreakable connection between Pythia and the company in Redwood Shores, CA.

-- 
Mladen Gogala
Oracle DBA
http://mgogala.freehostia.com


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