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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteNot exactly. Oracle’s database was named after a CIA project that its founders had worked on, according to Oracle’s own corporate timeline. But the company was founded in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories (SDL); the project connection explains the database’s name, not that the CIA founded Oracle.
What was the CIA connection?
Oracle’s corporate timeline says the database was “named after the CIA project the trio had worked on at the beginning of their association.” The trio was Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates. The timeline also captions a Project Oracle user guide as intended for computer users at the CIA. Those details establish an association between the founders’ early work and the CIA project, but they do not show that the agency founded Oracle or funded the company.
The available accounts do not specify the CIA contract date, procurement terms, or full project scope. It is therefore more accurate to say the project supplied the database’s name than to say Oracle itself began as a CIA company. Oracle’s 27th-anniversary timeline provides the company’s account.
When and how was Oracle founded?
Oracle dates its predecessor, Software Development Laboratories, to 1977. The company timeline says Ellison, Miner, and Oates founded SDL that year. The name “Oracle” came later as the database product’s name; the project association should not be confused with the legal or business origin of the company.
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What inspired the commercial database?
In a 1995 oral-history interview with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Ellison recalled seeing IBM Research’s System R paper in November 1976. He said the founders studied IBM’s relational-database work and SQL research and concluded they could build a commercial relational database. This is Ellison’s account of their inspiration; it does not indicate IBM founded or sponsored Oracle. Read the Smithsonian’s Larry Ellison oral history.
How did the first versions reach customers?
Version 1: an unreleased system
Oracle’s timeline says Version 1 ran in 1978 but was never officially released. It was written in assembly language and ran on a PDP-11 under RSX.
Version 2: the commercial release
Oracle’s timeline dates the release of Version 2 to 1979 and describes it as the first commercial SQL relational database management system. Ellison’s Smithsonian interview recalls that the first version was sold and installed in November 1979. These accounts describe the early product milestones from different angles: one gives Oracle’s version chronology, while the other recalls the first sale and installation.
Who was the first customer?
Ellison identified Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s Advanced Technology Division as the first customer of the commercial database. In the Smithsonian interview, he said: “The first customer was Wright Patterson Air Force Base, the Advanced Technology Division of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.” His account identifies Wright-Patterson, not the CIA, as the first commercial customer.
How was the early company financed?
Ellison said in the Smithsonian interview that the four founders invested $2,000 of their own money and had no outside funding. That is his retrospective account, not an independently audited figure.
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