computer science

Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Oracle Corporation rather than just read about it. In short: Oracle Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in Santa Clara, California, in 1977 by Bob Miner, Ed Oates, and current chairman of the board and chief technology officer Larry Ellison, Oracle is among the 50 largest companies in the world by market cap, and ranked 66th on the Forbes Global 2000 as of 2025.

Key takeaways

Oracle Corporation belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Oracle Corporation to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Oracle Corporation from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in Santa Clara, California, in 1977 by Bob Miner, Ed Oates, and current chairman of the board and chief technology officer Larry Ellison, Oracle is among the 50 largest companies in the world by market cap, and ranked 66th on the Forbes Global 2000 as of 2025. The company sells database software (particularly the Oracle Database), enterprise applications, and cloud infrastructure and hardware. Oracle's core application software is a suite of enterprise software products, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM), customer experience (CX) and supply chain management (SCM) software.

History

Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates co-founded Oracle on June 16, 1977, in Santa Clara, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL). Beginning as consultants with a background in large-scale memory after a project for Ampex, Ellison took inspiration from the 1970 paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database management systems (RDBMS) named "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks." He heard about the IBM System R database from an article in an IBM research journal provided by Oates. Ellison wanted to make Oracle's product compatible with System R, but failed to do so as IBM kept the error codes for its DBMS a secret. SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc (RSI) in 1979, then again to Oracle Systems Corporation in 1983, to align itself more closely with its flagship product Oracle Database. The name also drew from the codename of a 1977 project for the Central Intelligence Agency, Oracle's first customer; the company received permission to use the code name for the new product. (According to Oracle executive Mike Humphries, Miner told him that the new company had the choice of the CIA database project or another offer to develop a compiler for the PDP-4, and the founders flipped a coin to decide.) Miner served as a senior programmer, and Oates also worked in development. The three founders decided that Ellison was the worst programmer so he became the salesman. Understanding both customers and technology, Ellison designed database tables that he used to demonstrate the power of SQL to customers. By February 1983 the Rosen Electronics Letter said that Oracle was "the most comprehensive offering we've seen" among databases, with good marketing and a substantial installed base encouraging developers to write software for it. The newsletter said that revenue in fiscal 1983 would be about $8 million and would double in 1984. On March 12, 1986, the company had its initial public offering. In 1989, Oracle moved its world headquarters to the Redwood Shores neighborhood of Redwood City, California, though its campus was not completed until 1995. The company hired so many from top universities that Humphries compared it to "Cargill buying crops". Some new employees worked as receptionists or distributed coffee until more suitable positions became available. Oracle in the late 1980s began selling enterprise software running on the database, starting with financial software, then manufacturing. Many at Oracle wanted to discontinue applications; the first several versions were weak, they competed with the company's independent software vendors and value-added reseller partners, and applications were never profitable for Oracle until after 2000. Selling them (and acquiring vendors such as JD Edwards and PeopleSoft, the latter being the second hostile takeover in the history of software) nonetheless allowed Oracle to compete with SAP; by the mid-2000s it was the world's largest enterprise software vendor. The company's Ken Jacobs later said:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Oracle Corporation

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Oracle Corporation claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Oracle Corporation before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Oracle Corporation ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Oracle Corporation

In research: Oracle Corporation appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Oracle Corporation in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Oracle Corporation is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1977 establishments in California, 1980s initial public offerings, American companies established in 1977, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Oracle Corporation outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Oracle Corporation in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Oracle Corporation means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Oracle Corporation out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Oracle Corporation in simple terms?

Why does Oracle Corporation matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Oracle Corporation?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Oracle Corporation.