Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 511 Relational Database Market Situation

At this stage, Oracle's annual sales have exceeded 1000 million US dollars.This level is about the same as the top successful software companies in the personal computer industry.

But don't forget that the Oracle database mainly serves large customers, and its profits far exceed those of products on the personal computer platform.

There is no doubt that Oracle, which was founded two years earlier than Tang Huan's Zheru, is fully qualified to be titled a "successful company".

However, in the first few years, Oracle, like other small start-up companies, walked on eggshells.This can be seen from the two changes of its company name.

The rise of Oracle, in addition to relying on the extraordinary ability of the founder, is largely due to the ride on the rise of relational databases.

Human needs for data collection, storage, and analysis have existed since ancient times. The most famous example is the U.S. census, but the tools used until 1952 were still punched cards and card tabulation processors.

With the rise and maturity of computer application technology, data processing has finally entered a new stage of development, and database management systems have emerged as the times require, forming a huge market with inestimable commercial value.

To carry out computer processing on the data, it must be abstracted by mathematical means, thus summing up different structural models.

For example, a network database, as the name suggests, the association between data is as crisscross as in reality.

The earliest commercial product of network database is IDS running on mainframe platform launched by General Electric Company of the United States in 1964.Other well-known implementations include Hewlett-Packard's IMAGE and Cullinet's IDMS.

Among them, IDMS has the highest commercial achievement, which has brought Cullinet annual sales of over [-] million US dollars in the past two years.

Another example is hierarchical databases, where the relationships between data are further abstracted into a model similar to a family tree.

The most famous layered database commercial product is IMS launched by IBM in the late 1960s.

Regardless of whether it is a network database or a layered database, as the scale of the database expands, the connection between the data will be so complicated that even the administrator who created the database at the beginning will be confused, which will bring great difficulties to maintenance. .

Fortunately, at this time, the theory of relational database appeared.

In 1970, Edgar Frank Codd, a researcher at IBM, published a paper entitled "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data banks", which laid the foundation for The theoretical basis of the relational model has been appreciated by both academia and industry.

For this reason, Edgar Frank Codd is known as the "Father of Relational Databases" and won the Turing Award in 1981.

When the academic debate over which network database or relational database is better ended with the latter winning, the issue of turning relational database from a theoretical achievement into a software implementation was immediately placed in front of researchers.

Honeywell——Honeywell was the first to achieve the commercial results of relational databases. It launched MDRS in 1976, but the market performance was mediocre.

As the first company to propose a relational model, IBM will certainly not lag behind. It has specially formed a team of 40 people to develop a relational database, and named it the "R" system, which means the initial letter of the English word "relationship". .

In 1974, the IBM R&D team won its first battle and successfully developed SQL, a structured query language for relational databases.

By 1977, the "R" system was ready for operation.

But IBM, with a serious bureaucratic style, made an old mistake again. Its layered database IMS was selling hot at that time, which brought a lot of money to the company, so it naturally suppressed the commercial operation of the "R" system.

Ever since, the outside world only saw the R&D personnel of the "R" system frequently publish academic papers, but did not see IBM actively launching marketing activities.

In this way, IBM gave two other relational databases, Ingres and Oracle, a chance to succeed.

Ingres was jointly developed by a group of government-funded professors at the University of California, Berkeley.In order to develop Zheru's own database EBase, Tang Huan poached some of them.

Ingres's R&D team and IBM's "R" R&D team are familiar with each other, so they often conduct technical exchanges and develop a set of relational database language QUEL similar to SQL.

The two groups also committed the problem of ignorance of literati, and quarrels broke out from time to time, and then accused each other of plagiarizing their solutions.

In the end, the two parties simply parted ways, and competed with each other with real swords and guns.
In 1980, several members of the Ingres R&D team established Relational Technology Co., Ltd., or RTI, to conduct commercial operations of the Ingres database.

The predecessor of ORACLE, the Software Development Laboratory - SDL, was originally created to make it easier to make extra money.

At that time, the company Larry Ellison worked for had to develop a data storage and retrieval device, and the workload was very heavy.

Therefore, Larry Ellison successfully lobbied the company for business outsourcing, and co-founded SDL with his former colleagues Bob Miner and Ed Oates. Pen.

After this, Larry Ellison left the company to concentrate on running his own SDL.

He also moved the office to the heart of Silicon Valley, and changed its name to RSI, a relational software company, to positively reflect the relational database ORACLE that the company is developing.

Unlike Ingres, which has its own relational database language QUEL, ORACLE draws on IBM's SQL, and Tang Huan's EBase also has a similar choice.

As a pioneer in the commercialization of relational databases, ORACLE databases naturally gained some first-mover advantages.

For example, the CIA came to us and asked to buy this product.At the same time, Larry Ellison also found another big customer-the Office of Naval Intelligence.

The first version of ORACLE ran on DEC's PDP-11, while the versions required by the CIA and Naval Intelligence were IBM's mainframe and DEC's VAX.

Both of these products are not cheap, and RSI does not have enough financial resources to purchase them, but transplanting ORACLE cannot be separated from this environment. Larry Ellison and others can only ask their grandfathers and grandmothers to borrow them everywhere, and even use rogue methods. Finally completed the second version of ORACLE.

However, at this time, Oracle still has many problems such as wrong retrieval results, and even data loss.

At this time, Larry Ellison's personal ability was revealed. He insisted on delivering this immature product to the Central Intelligence Agency and the Naval Intelligence Agency, making the other party his own faultfinder.

Of course, RSI's service attitude is definitely good enough, and it is always there, and if there is a mistake, it will be corrected.

It is with this ingenious marketing and good service that RSI opened up the relational database market.RTI, which started to commercialize Ingres, is characterized by excellent technology and excellent quality.

In this way, RSI and RTI launched an incompatible competition.

Compared with those professors at RTI, Larry Ellison's methods are obviously more clever.

Since the names of RSI and RTI are very close, checks from RTI will be sent to RSI by mistake from time to time. At this time, Larry Ellison will try to delay these checks so as to increase unnecessary financial pressure on the opponent. Let RTI complain.

In this competition, RSI took the lead, and Larry Ellison also began to spare no effort to replace assembly language with C language, rewritten the third version of the database, and changed the company name to ORACLE.

The competition between RSI and RTI represents the relational database market pattern in the field of minicomputers and mainframes. Driven by Tang Huan, the microcomputer database market gradually took shape, showing its coveted commercial value.

For example, as a leader, EBase, relying on the electronic, powerful, and easy-to-use features advertised by "E", contributed 1981 million US dollars in sales to Zheru in 5000 alone.

Ashton-Tate's DBase, backed by the IBM-PC platform, seems to be competing with Zheru's EBase, but it does not yet have the characteristics of a relational database, and it is not qualified to be an opponent of EBase.

Seeing that the relational database market was booming, IBM was dumbfounded and quickly caught up. After rigorous testing of the "R" system, it launched its own commercial relational database SQL/DS at the end of 1981.

Big Blue did have the capital to be conservative and late to strike. In 1983, it launched DB2, an industrial-grade database with more comprehensive functions. Big customers agreed to buy it, and it recovered a lot of its previous disadvantages.

EBase, ORACLE, and DB2 all support SQL, which virtually makes this database language a de facto industry standard, and other relational database products will sooner or later come closer.

But the current relational database vendors are not aware of this. Except for EBase and DB2, other databases are trying their best to increase the types of computer platforms they can support.

For example, ORACLE has officially supported Fangyuan Computer and IBM-PC since the fourth version, and trumpeted the portability, connectivity, and compatibility of its own products.

Portability refers to the support of many computer hardware platforms, and connectivity refers to the ORACLE database installed on different computers, which can be connected for data communication.

As for compatibility, it means that it is compatible with DB2 and EBase, which also use SQL.This publicity gimmick inevitably has the suspicion of hugging the thigh and dipping in the light.

When Tang Huan strolled to the ORACLE booth, he happened to see Larry Ellison eloquently introducing the various benefits of the ORACLE database.

"This Larry Ellison is very similar to Steve Jobs. COMDEX, which is open to all kinds of people, is really getting more and more lively." Tang Huan joked and asked casually, "By the way, this is the first time ORACLE has appeared. Bar?"

"That's my impression." Charles Simeone nodded.

"Originally, ORACLE focused on pursuing big customers, but now it has begun to pay attention to publicity to the public. It seems that the market positioning has changed." Tang Huan thoughtfully analyzed.

"It wasn't until the third version that ORACLE began to support the transaction-transaction feature. From this, it is not difficult to infer that their technology research and development is very limited." Looking at Larry Ellison's rhetoric, Performing happily, Charles Simeone was quite disdainful.

The so-called transaction is the basic unit of recovery and concurrency control.To put it bluntly, operations that are grouped into a group must either be completed or canceled.

For example, the operation of transferring money from account A to account B includes at least two steps, that is, subtracting a number from account A and adding a number to account B.

This operation must be completed completely. If there is an unexpected power outage, system downtime, software crash and other disasters between the first step and the second step, it is also necessary to ensure that all invalid operations can be undone.Otherwise, the database will be in trouble.

After EBase was launched, it has supported transactional features since 1980, at least one and a half years ahead of ORACLE.

It is precisely because of these factors that Charles Simeone is proud of himself, and somewhat dislikes Larry Ellison's flamboyant show.

At this time, Larry Ellison got excited and waved his hand. Several ORACLE employees brought out an extra-large advertising board from the back and erected it in front of the stage, causing a commotion immediately.

Tang Huan took a closer look and saw a jet fighter representing ORACLE in the middle, a parrot representing Ashton-Tate Company on the left, and a phoenix representing Zheru on the right—the logo of Zerone was originally created by The two numbers "Zero" and "One" are composed of the pattern of free flying birds. Later, because of the overwhelming sense of honor and catering to Tang Huan's preferences, the subordinates gradually evolved it into the oriental bird-phoenix .

Jet fighters fired left and right, launching several missiles to attack Parrot and Phoenix. Each missile implies that the ORACLE database surpasses the function of DBase and EBase.

"So arrogant!" Charles Simeone turned livid with anger, while Tang Huan looked at the complacent Larry Ellison playfully. The other party seemed to enjoy the sensational effect he had created.

The scene was full of commotion, and a few bottles of Coke were thrown from nowhere, and smashed heavily on the advertising board, and there was a sudden commotion.

Seeing this scene, the crowd became more and more noisy, causing the exhibition security to nervously gather to maintain order.

Larry Ellison wiped the drink splashed on his face, and roared angrily, "Who did it? Stand up if you have the ability!"

Tang Huanze, Charles Simeone and other subordinates looked at each other in blank dismay, thinking that whoever is so happy to enmity is really exciting!

(End of this chapter)