Re: Oracle History??

joel-garry_at_home.com (Joel Garry) wrote in message news:<91884734.0211251748.43bbe98_at_posting.google.com>...

<snip irrelevant stuff>   

> > > Mainframes and Minicomputers," and "the first SQL" whatever, as if
> > > that is some kind of great thing. In the early to mid '80s there were
> > > several superior languages to SQL, and Oracle was by no means the best
> >
> > Like what? I'm apparently becoming old and can't remember any DB language
> > superior to SQL. BTW, IBM was actually first to create relational DB
>
> User-11 on PDP's, and it's various children and grandchildren.
>
> InTouch.
>
> Datatrieve, for that matter.
>

Datatrieve was based on network model, was it not? Just asking, I don't remember much from pre-SQL times.

> Those are just ones I happen to know. I'm sure there are more that I
> don't.
>
> Even the SQL creators recognized that it was only half-a-standard:
>
> http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/SRC/technical-notes/SRC-1997-018-html/sqlr95.html
>
> > based on SQL (project R), but initially they decided against developing
> > in further into marketable product. AFAIK Larry Ellison was working for
> > IBM then... May be he's got some ideas.
>
> Yeah, I'm sure he went "Wow! Let's standardize on SQL as a data
> interchange language!" Not.
>

I didn't say so. But he could've got the idea of marketable SQL-based database system.

> >
> > > system for any particular purpose. Like IBM, the greatness, if you
> > > want to call it that, was in the marketing and financials. So what if
> > > Star could join db's in New York and SF - in the mid-80's, I saw a
> > > language that could join between different DBMS's!
> >
> > SQL can do it. There is no restrictions on phisical location of tables
> > in the language definition. True, it wasn't realized until Oracle 6
> > (I might be wrong, correct me if so), but it's not language restriction,
> > it was an implementation restriction.
>
> Sorry, I don't know the syntax for SQL*Plus to open an Ingres
> database. However, I do know the syntax for a language that could
> open an Oracle database and an Ingres database and join the tables
> together - at least if I root around in the basement and find the
> manuals from 1986.

SQL*Plus is not a language, it's a tool. SQL is a language and there is nothing in language definition which prevents it from working in the distributed system and/or with different database systems. Again, you are talking about implementation restrictions.

The point is, SQL is just another notation for relational calculus, at least it was initially. I don't know any other math model for databases as good as relational calculus (relational algebra is a full equivalent, of course, but it's not as good to write complex queries).

Oracle was first to put SQL database on the market. There were network based DBs at the time, I remember serios articles which claimed that SQL-based DBs would never reach network DBs performance. Somehow network DBs died out together with CODASYL. There were several attempts to create OO DBs, which, when you think of it, is just another implementation of network model.

Sorry, SQL found it's way to the top of DB world in tough competition. And Oracle is not the only implementation. DB2, MS SQL-Server, Informix, Sybase are all SQL-based databases.

>
> jg

Regards,

Alex. Received on Tue Nov 26 2002 - 10:24:03 CST