Re: Oracle Jargon

In article <3cc683c8_1_at_news.iprimus.com.au>, you said (and I quote):
> I am confused with the terminology of Oracle products.

Hehehe! Common problem, don't worry.

> Is SQL*plus to Oracle like java is to Sun Microsystems?

As in being a product (program) sold by a company? Yes.

> Is Oracle a company name like microsoft which produces many products like:
>
> SQL
> SQL*PLUS
> PL/SQL
>

Not exactly. What you have is a company called "ORACLE Systems Corporation" (at least that's what the public prospectus issue from 12th March 1986 says...).

This company develops, produces, markets and sells a number of software products.

Their main product is a Relational Database Management System (in short "RDBMS") which uses the SQL language as its interface. This RDBMS goes by the name of "Oracle".

There is also a bucketload of other software products which interact or use the Oracle RDBMS. One of them is "SQL*Plus". There are many, many others.

Clearer now?

As a footnote:

"SQL" is a language. Public domain and subject to standards defined by industry organizations. Defined many years ago as part of an IBM research project.

Finally thrown (in disgust) into the public domain by a guy called Edward (Ted) Codd. He was the inventor and main promoter for many years of the concept of a "Relational Database".

I say in disgust because like so many other old products from IBM, the technology existed but was not available to the public in order to protect the mainframe monopoly that IBM ran back then.

Around 1990, SQL became a widely accepted "de facto" standard and essentially replaced all the other languages used to access data in a RDBMS. Most products supporting alternative languages ended up siding with SQL as the "lingua franca" of relational databases.

ORACLE's credit in this comes from recognizing the importance of SQL early on and sticking with it even though there were other options available. They also were one of the very first companies to develop and sell a RDBMS capable of running in a variety of computer hardware.

-- 
Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam