Oracle Corporation, formerly Software Development Laboratories (1977–79), Relational Software Inc. (1979–82), and Oracle Systems Corporation (1982–95), global corporation that develops and markets computer software applications for business. The company is best known for its Oracle database software, a relational database management system, and for computer systems and software, such as Solaris and Java, acquired in its purchase of Sun Microsystems in 2010. Oracle is based in Redwood Shores, California. Learn for more OnlineITGuru
The company, initially called Software Development Laboratories, was founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison and Bob Miner, computer programmers at the American electronics company Ampex Corporation, and by Ed Oates, Ellison’s supervisor at Ampex. Inspired by a research paper written by British-born computer scientist Edgar F. Codd that outlined a relational database model, Ellison and his colleagues saw commercial potential in the approach, which organized large amounts of data in a way that allowed for efficient storage and quick retrieval. The trio set to work developing and marketing a program based on Codd’s data management theory. In 1979 the company released Oracle, the earliest commercial relational database program to use Structured Query Language (SQL), and it quickly became popular. Its first customer was the U.S. Air Force, which used the program at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio.