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Structured Query Language ( SQL ) ( pronounced S-Q-L ; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling structured data , i.e., data incorporating relations among entities and variables.

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72-805: Introduced in the 1970s, SQL offered two main advantages over older read–write APIs such as ISAM or VSAM . Firstly, it introduced the concept of accessing many records with one single command . Secondly, it eliminates the need to specify how to reach a record, i.e., with or without an index . Originally based upon relational algebra and tuple relational calculus , SQL consists of many types of statements, which may be informally classed as sublanguages , commonly: Data query Language (DQL), Data Definition Language (DDL), Data Control Language (DCL), and Data Manipulation Language (DML). The scope of SQL includes data query, data manipulation (insert, update, and delete), data definition ( schema creation and modification), and data access control. Although SQL

144-544: A procedural language such as Lua could consist primarily of basic routines to execute code, manipulate data or handle errors while an API for an object-oriented language , such as Java, would provide a specification of classes and its class methods . Hyrum's law states that "With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody." Meanwhile, several studies show that most applications that use an API tend to use

216-420: A software framework : a framework can be based on several libraries implementing several APIs, but unlike the normal use of an API, the access to the behavior built into the framework is mediated by extending its content with new classes plugged into the framework itself. Moreover, the overall program flow of control can be out of the control of the caller and in the framework's hands by inversion of control or

288-656: A standard of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1986 and of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1987. Since then, the standard has been revised multiple times to include a larger set of features and incorporate common extensions. Despite the existence of standards, virtually no implementations in existence adhere to it fully, and most SQL code requires at least some changes before being ported to different database systems. SQL

360-496: A user interface , an API is typically not visible to users. It is an "under the hood" portion of a software system, used for machine-to-machine communication. A well-designed API exposes only objects or actions needed by software or software developers. It hides details that have no use. This abstraction simplifies programming. Building software using APIs has been compared to using building-block toys, such as Lego bricks. Software services or software libraries are analogous to

432-449: A broad term describing much of the communication on the internet. When used in this way, the term API has overlap in meaning with the term communication protocol . The interface to a software library is one type of API. The API describes and prescribes the "expected behavior" (a specification) while the library is an "actual implementation" of this set of rules. A single API can have multiple implementations (or none, being abstract) in

504-517: A business ecosystem. The main policies for releasing an API are: An important factor when an API becomes public is its "interface stability". Changes to the API—for example adding new parameters to a function call—could break compatibility with the clients that depend on that API. When parts of a publicly presented API are subject to change and thus not stable, such parts of a particular API should be documented explicitly as "unstable". For example, in

576-460: A client would need to know for practical purposes. Documentation is crucial for the development and maintenance of applications using the API. API documentation is traditionally found in documentation files but can also be found in social media such as blogs, forums, and Q&A websites. Traditional documentation files are often presented via a documentation system, such as Javadoc or Pydoc, that has

648-435: A consistent appearance and structure. However, the types of content included in the documentation differs from API to API. In the interest of clarity, API documentation may include a description of classes and methods in the API as well as "typical usage scenarios, code snippets, design rationales, performance discussions, and contracts", but implementation details of the API services themselves are usually omitted. It can take

720-662: A consultancy called Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977. SDL developed the original version of the Oracle software. The name Oracle comes from the code-name of a CIA -funded project Ellison had worked on while formerly employed by Ampex . Oracle products follow a custom release-numbering and -naming convention. The "ai" in the current release, Oracle Database 23ai, stands for "Artificial Intelligence". Previous releases (e.g. Oracle Database 19c, 10g, and Oracle9i Database) have used suffixes of "c", "g", and "i" which stand for "Cloud", "Grid", and "Internet" respectively. Prior to

792-534: A given API, it is possible to infer the typical usages, as well the required contracts and directives. Then, templates can be used to generate natural language from the mined data. In 2010, Oracle Corporation sued Google for having distributed a new implementation of Java embedded in the Android operating system. Google had not acquired any permission to reproduce the Java API, although permission had been given to

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864-474: A local RDB and receive tables of data and status indicators in reply from remote RDBs. SQL statements can also be compiled and stored in remote RDBs as packages and then invoked by package name. This is important for the efficient operation of application programs that issue complex, high-frequency queries. It is especially important when the tables to be accessed are located in remote systems. The messages, protocols, and structural components of DRDA are defined by

936-441: A modular software library in the 1940s for EDSAC , an early computer. The subroutines in this library were stored on punched paper tape organized in a filing cabinet . This cabinet also contained what Wilkes and Wheeler called a "library catalog" of notes about each subroutine and how to incorporate it into a program. Today, such a catalog would be called an API (or an API specification or API documentation) because it instructs

1008-470: A number of forms, including instructional documents, tutorials, and reference works. It'll also include a variety of information types, including guides and functionalities. Restrictions and limitations on how the API can be used are also covered by the documentation. For instance, documentation for an API function could note that its parameters cannot be null, that the function itself is not thread safe . Because API documentation tends to be comprehensive, it

1080-440: A programmer on how to use (or "call") each subroutine that the programmer needs. Wilkes and Wheeler's book The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer contains the first published API specification. Joshua Bloch considers that Wilkes and Wheeler "latently invented" the API, because it is more of a concept that is discovered than invented. The term "application program interface" (without an -ing suffix)

1152-472: A roadblock to full use of SQL's user-defined types. JSON support, for example, needed to be added by a new standard in 2016. The concept of Null is the subject of some debate . The Null marker indicates the absence of a value, and is distinct from a value of 0 for an integer column or an empty string for a text column. The concept of Nulls enforces the 3-valued-logic in SQL , which is a concrete implementation of

1224-643: A shipping company API that can be added to an eCommerce-focused website to facilitate ordering shipping services and automatically include current shipping rates, without the site developer having to enter the shipper's rate table into a web database. While "web API" historically has been virtually synonymous with web service , the recent trend (so-called Web 2.0 ) has been moving away from Simple Object Access Protocol ( SOAP ) based web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) towards more direct representational state transfer (REST) style web resources and resource-oriented architecture (ROA). Part of this trend

1296-404: A similar mechanism. An API can specify the interface between an application and the operating system . POSIX , for example, specifies a set of common APIs that aim to enable an application written for a POSIX conformant operating system to be compiled for another POSIX conformant operating system. Linux and Berkeley Software Distribution are examples of operating systems that implement

1368-441: A small part of the API. Language bindings are also APIs. By mapping the features and capabilities of one language to an interface implemented in another language, a language binding allows a library or service written in one language to be used when developing in another language. Tools such as SWIG and F2PY, a Fortran -to- Python interface generator, facilitate the creation of such interfaces. An API can also be related to

1440-551: A system of commands and thereby bar all others from writing its different versions to carry out all or part of the same commands. Oracle Database Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS , Oracle Autonomous Database , or simply as Oracle ) is a proprietary multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation . It is a database commonly used for running online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing (DW) and mixed (OLTP & DW) database workloads. Oracle Database

1512-454: Is a challenge for writers to keep the documentation updated and for users to read it carefully, potentially yielding bugs. API documentation can be enriched with metadata information like Java annotations . This metadata can be used by the compiler, tools, and by the run-time environment to implement custom behaviors or custom handling. It is possible to generate API documentation in a data-driven manner. By observing many programs that use

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1584-430: Is an API response . A weather forecasting app might integrate with a number of weather sensor APIs, gathering weather data from throughout a geographical area. An API is often compared to a contract . It represents an agreement between parties: a service provider who offers the API and the software developers who rely upon it. If the API remains stable, or if it changes only in predictable ways, developers' confidence in

1656-512: Is an architectural approach that revolves around providing a program interface to a set of services to different applications serving different types of consumers. When used in the context of web development , an API is typically defined as a set of specifications, such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request messages, along with a definition of the structure of response messages, usually in an Extensible Markup Language ( XML ) or JavaScript Object Notation ( JSON ) format. An example might be

1728-404: Is available by several service providers on-premises , on-cloud , or as a hybrid cloud installation. It may be run on third party servers as well as on Oracle hardware ( Exadata on-premises, on Oracle Cloud or at Cloud at Customer). Oracle Database uses SQL for database updating and retrieval. Larry Ellison and his two friends and former co-workers, Bob Miner and Ed Oates , started

1800-522: Is created in one place dynamically can be posted and updated to multiple locations on the web. For example, Twitter's REST API allows developers to access core Twitter data and the Search API provides methods for developers to interact with Twitter Search and trends data. The design of an API has significant impact on its usage. The principle of information hiding describes the role of programming interfaces as enabling modular programming by hiding

1872-437: Is essentially a declarative language ( 4GL ), it also includes procedural elements. SQL was one of the first commercial languages to use Edgar F. Codd 's relational model . The model was described in his influential 1970 paper, "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks". Despite not entirely adhering to the relational model as described by Codd , SQL became the most widely used database language. SQL became

1944-399: Is first recorded in a paper called Data structures and techniques for remote computer graphics presented at an AFIPS conference in 1968. The authors of this paper use the term to describe the interaction of an application—a graphics program in this case—with the rest of the computer system. A consistent application interface (consisting of Fortran subroutine calls) was intended to free

2016-453: Is now the most common meaning of the term API. The Semantic Web proposed by Tim Berners-Lee in 2001 included "semantic APIs" that recast the API as an open , distributed data interface rather than a software behavior interface. Proprietary interfaces and agents became more widespread than open ones, but the idea of the API as a data interface took hold. Because web APIs are widely used to exchange data of all kinds online, API has become

2088-422: Is often made up of different parts which act as tools or services that are available to the programmer. A program or a programmer that uses one of these parts is said to call that portion of the API. The calls that make up the API are also known as subroutines , methods, requests, or endpoints . An API specification defines these calls, meaning that it explains how to use or implement them. One purpose of APIs

2160-475: Is related to the Semantic Web movement toward Resource Description Framework (RDF), a concept to promote web-based ontology engineering technologies. Web APIs allow the combination of multiple APIs into new applications known as mashups . In the social media space, web APIs have allowed web communities to facilitate sharing content and data between communities and applications. In this way, content that

2232-437: Is said to implement or expose an API. The term API may refer either to the specification or to the implementation. In contrast to a user interface , which connects a computer to a person, an application programming interface connects computers or pieces of software to each other. It is not intended to be used directly by a person (the end user ) other than a computer programmer who is incorporating it into software. An API

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2304-440: Is to hide the internal details of how a system works, exposing only those parts a programmer will find useful and keeping them consistent even if the internal details later change. An API may be custom-built for a particular pair of systems, or it may be a shared standard allowing interoperability among many systems. The term API is often used to refer to web APIs , which allow communication between computers that are joined by

2376-501: The Distributed Data Management Architecture . Distributed SQL processing ala DRDA is distinctive from contemporary distributed SQL databases. SQL deviates in several ways from its theoretical foundation, the relational model and its tuple calculus. In that model, a table is a set of tuples, while in SQL, tables and query results are lists of rows; the same row may occur multiple times, and

2448-549: The Google Guava library, the parts that are considered unstable, and that might change soon, are marked with the Java annotation @Beta . A public API can sometimes declare parts of itself as deprecated or rescinded. This usually means that part of the API should be considered a candidate for being removed, or modified in a backward incompatible way. Therefore, these changes allow developers to transition away from parts of

2520-686: The Java language in particular. In the 1990s, with the spread of the internet , standards like CORBA , COM , and DCOM competed to become the most common way to expose API services. Roy Fielding 's dissertation Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures at UC Irvine in 2000 outlined Representational state transfer (REST) and described the idea of a "network-based Application Programming Interface" that Fielding contrasted with traditional "library-based" APIs. XML and JSON web APIs saw widespread commercial adoption beginning in 2000 and continuing as of 2021. The web API

2592-512: The Java remote method invocation API uses the Java Remote Method Protocol to allow invocation of functions that operate remotely, but appear local to the developer. Therefore, remote APIs are useful in maintaining the object abstraction in object-oriented programming ; a method call , executed locally on a proxy object, invokes the corresponding method on the remote object, using the remoting protocol, and acquires

2664-556: The Linux Standard Base provides an ABI. Remote APIs allow developers to manipulate remote resources through protocols , specific standards for communication that allow different technologies to work together, regardless of language or platform. For example, the Java Database Connectivity API allows developers to query many different types of databases with the same set of functions, while

2736-602: The database , while prior versions of SQL Server were restricted to unmanaged extended stored procedures primarily written in C. PostgreSQL lets users write functions in a wide variety of languages—including Perl , Python , Tcl , JavaScript (PL/V8) and C. SQL implementations are incompatible between vendors and do not necessarily completely follow standards. In particular, date and time syntax, string concatenation, NULL s, and comparison case sensitivity vary from vendor to vendor. PostgreSQL and Mimer SQL strive for standards compliance, though PostgreSQL does not adhere to

2808-479: The internet . There are also APIs for programming languages , software libraries , computer operating systems , and computer hardware . APIs originated in the 1940s, though the term did not emerge until the 1960s and 70s. An API opens a software system to interactions from the outside. It allows two software systems to communicate across a boundary — an interface — using mutually agreed-upon signals. In other words, an API connects software entities together. Unlike

2880-495: The 1970s. Chamberlin and Boyce's first attempt at a relational database language was SQUARE (Specifying Queries in A Relational Environment), but it was difficult to use due to subscript/superscript notation. After moving to the San Jose Research Laboratory in 1973, they began work on a sequel to SQUARE. The original name SEQUEL, which is widely regarded as a pun on QUEL , the query language of Ingres ,

2952-461: The API that will be removed or not supported in the future. Client code may contain innovative or opportunistic usages that were not intended by the API designers. In other words, for a library with a significant user base, when an element becomes part of the public API, it may be used in diverse ways. On February 19, 2020, Akamai published their annual “State of the Internet” report, showcasing

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3024-489: The API will increase. This may increase their use of the API. The term API initially described an interface only for end-user-facing programs, known as application programs . This origin is still reflected in the name "application programming interface." Today, the term is broader, including also utility software and even hardware interfaces . The idea of the API is much older than the term itself. British computer scientists Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler worked on

3096-544: The ISO in 1987. It is maintained by ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee SC 32, Data management and interchange . Until 1996, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) data-management standards program certified SQL DBMS compliance with the SQL standard. Vendors now self-certify the compliance of their products. The original standard declared that the official pronunciation for "SQL"

3168-502: The POSIX APIs. Microsoft has shown a strong commitment to a backward-compatible API, particularly within its Windows API (Win32) library, so older applications may run on newer versions of Windows using an executable-specific setting called "Compatibility Mode". An API differs from an application binary interface (ABI) in that an API is source code based while an ABI is binary based. For instance, POSIX provides APIs while

3240-401: The application programming interface separately from other interfaces, such as the query interface. Database professionals in the 1970s observed these different interfaces could be combined; a sufficiently rich application interface could support the other interfaces as well. This observation led to APIs that supported all types of programming, not just application programming. By 1990, the API

3312-413: The bricks; they may be joined together via their APIs, composing a new software product. The process of joining is called integration . As an example, consider a weather sensor that offers an API. When a certain message is transmitted to the sensor, it will detect the current weather conditions and reply with a weather report. The message that activates the sensor is an API call , and the weather report

3384-621: The cloud, Oracle Database competes against the database services of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Increasingly, the Oracle database products compete against open-source software relational and non-relational database systems such as PostgreSQL , MongoDB , Couchbase , Neo4j , ArangoDB and others. Oracle acquired Innobase , supplier of the InnoDB codebase to MySQL , in part to compete better against open source alternatives, and acquired Sun Microsystems , owner of MySQL, in 2010. Database products licensed as open-source are, by

3456-778: The current Oracle Database releases and their patching end dates. Prior to Oracle Database 18c, Oracle Corporation released Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) and Security Patch Updates (SPUs) and Security Alerts to close security vulnerabilities. These releases are issued quarterly; some of these releases have updates issued prior to the next quarterly release. Starting with Oracle Database 18c, Oracle Corporation releases Release Updates (RUs) and Release Update Revisions (RURs). RUs usually contain security, regression (bug), optimizer, and functional fixes which may include feature extensions as well. RURs include all fixes from their corresponding RU but only add new security and regression fixes. However, no new optimizer or functional fixes are included. In

3528-420: The form of different libraries that share the same programming interface. The separation of the API from its implementation can allow programs written in one language to use a library written in another. For example, because Scala and Java compile to compatible bytecode , Scala developers can take advantage of any Java API. API use can vary depending on the type of programming language involved. An API for

3600-402: The general 3-valued logic . Another popular criticism is that it allows duplicate rows, making integration with languages such as Python , whose data types might make accurately representing the data difficult, in terms of parsing and by the absence of modularity. This is usually avoided by declaring a primary key, or a unique constraint, with one or more columns that uniquely identify a row in

3672-476: The growing trend of cybercriminals targeting public API platforms at financial services worldwide. From December 2017 through November 2019, Akamai witnessed 85.42 billion credential violation attacks. About 20%, or 16.55 billion, were against hostnames defined as API endpoints. Of these, 473.5 million have targeted financial services sector organizations. API documentation describes what services an API offers and how to use those services, aiming to cover everything

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3744-490: The implementation details of the modules so that users of modules need not understand the complexities inside the modules. Thus, the design of an API attempts to provide only the tools a user would expect. The design of programming interfaces represents an important part of software architecture , the organization of a complex piece of software. APIs are one of the more common ways technology companies integrate. Those that provide and use APIs are considered as being members of

3816-408: The implementation. API An application programming interface ( API ) is a connection between computers or between computer programs . It is a type of software interface , offering a service to other pieces of software . A document or standard that describes how to build such a connection or interface is called an API specification . A computer system that meets this standard

3888-522: The late 1970s, Relational Software, Inc. (now Oracle Corporation ) saw the potential of the concepts described by Codd, Chamberlin, and Boyce, and developed their own SQL-based RDBMS with aspirations of selling it to the U.S. Navy , Central Intelligence Agency , and other U.S. government agencies. In June 1979, Relational Software introduced one of the first commercially available implementations of SQL, Oracle V2 (Version2) for VAX computers. By 1986, ANSI and ISO standard groups officially adopted

3960-852: The market for relational databases, Oracle Database competes against commercial products such as IBM Db2 and Microsoft SQL Server . Oracle and IBM tend to battle for the mid-range database market on Unix and Linux platforms, while Microsoft dominates the mid-range database market on Microsoft Windows platforms. However, since they share many of the same customers, Oracle and IBM tend to support each other's products in many middleware and application categories (for example: WebSphere , PeopleSoft , and Siebel Systems CRM ), and IBM's hardware divisions work closely with Oracle on performance-optimizing server-technologies (for example, Linux on IBM Z ). Niche commercial competitors include Teradata (in data warehousing and business intelligence), Software AG's ADABAS , Sybase , and IBM's Informix , among many others. In

4032-466: The most popular commercial and proprietary SQL DBMSs, are Oracle (whose DATE behaves as DATETIME , and lacks a TIME type) and MS SQL Server (before the 2008 version). As a result, SQL code can rarely be ported between database systems without modifications. Several reasons for the lack of portability between database systems include: SQL was adopted as a standard by the ANSI in 1986 as SQL-86 and

4104-559: The order of rows can be employed in queries (e.g., in the LIMIT clause). Critics argue that SQL should be replaced with a language that returns strictly to the original foundation: for example, see The Third Manifesto by Hugh Darwen and C.J. Date (2006, ISBN   0-321-39942-0 ). Early specifications did not support major features, such as primary keys. Result sets could not be named, and subqueries had not been defined. These were added in 1992. The lack of sum types has been described as

4176-423: The pattern: ISO/IEC 9075-n:yyyy Part n: title , or, as a shortcut, ISO/IEC 9075 . Interested parties may purchase the standards documents from ISO, IEC, or ANSI. Some old drafts are freely available. ISO/IEC 9075 is complemented by ISO/IEC 13249: SQL Multimedia and Application Packages and some Technical reports . A distinction should be made between alternatives to SQL as a language, and alternatives to

4248-614: The programmer from dealing with idiosyncrasies of the graphics display device, and to provide hardware independence if the computer or the display were replaced. The term was introduced to the field of databases by C. J. Date in a 1974 paper called The Relational and Network Approaches: Comparison of the Application Programming Interface . An API became a part of the ANSI/SPARC framework for database management systems . This framework treated

4320-490: The relational model itself. Below are proposed relational alternatives to the SQL language. See navigational database and NoSQL for alternatives to the relational model. Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA) was designed by a workgroup within IBM from 1988 to 1994. DRDA enables network-connected relational databases to cooperate to fulfill SQL requests. An interactive user or program can issue SQL statements to

4392-467: The release of Oracle8i Database, no suffixes featured in Oracle Database naming conventions. There was no v1 of Oracle Database, as co-founder Larry Ellison "knew no one would want to buy version 1". For some database releases, Oracle also provides an Express Edition (XE) that is free to use. Oracle Database release numbering has used the following codes: Oracle Database 23c (23.2 and 23.3)

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4464-442: The result to be used locally as a return value. A modification of the proxy object will also result in a corresponding modification of the remote object. Web APIs are the defined interfaces through which interactions happen between an enterprise and applications that use its assets, which also is a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to specify the functional provider and expose the service path or URL for its API users. An API approach

4536-452: The similar OpenJDK project. Judge William Alsup ruled in the Oracle v. Google case that APIs cannot be copyrighted in the U.S. and that a victory for Oracle would have widely expanded copyright protection to a "functional set of symbols" and allowed the copyrighting of simple software commands: To accept Oracle's claim would be to allow anyone to copyright one version of code to carry out

4608-616: The standard "Database Language SQL" language definition. New versions of the standard were published in 1989, 1992, 1996, 1999, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2016 and most recently, 2023. The SQL language is subdivided into several language elements, including: SQL is designed for a specific purpose: to query data contained in a relational database . SQL is a set -based, declarative programming language , not an imperative programming language like C or BASIC . However, extensions to Standard SQL add procedural programming language functionality, such as control-of-flow constructs. In addition to

4680-587: The standard SQL/PSM extensions and proprietary SQL extensions, procedural and object-oriented programmability is available on many SQL platforms via DBMS integration with other languages. The SQL standard defines SQL/JRT extensions (SQL Routines and Types for the Java Programming Language) to support Java code in SQL databases. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 uses the SQLCLR (SQL Server Common Language Runtime) to host managed .NET assemblies in

4752-579: The standard in all cases. For example, the folding of unquoted names to lower case in PostgreSQL is incompatible with the SQL standard, which says that unquoted names should be folded to upper case. Thus, according to the standard, Foo should be equivalent to FOO , not foo . Popular implementations of SQL commonly omit support for basic features of Standard SQL, such as the DATE or TIME data types. The most obvious such examples, and incidentally

4824-606: The table. In a sense similar to object–relational impedance mismatch , a mismatch occurs between the declarative SQL language and the procedural languages in which SQL is typically embedded. The SQL standard defines three kinds of data types (chapter 4.1.1 of SQL/Foundation): Constructed types are one of ARRAY, MULTISET, REF(erence), or ROW. User-defined types are comparable to classes in object-oriented language with their own constructors, observers, mutators, methods, inheritance, overloading, overwriting, interfaces, and so on. Predefined data types are intrinsically supported by

4896-411: Was an initialism : / ˌ ɛ s ˌ k juː ˈ ɛ l / ("ess cue el"). Regardless, many English-speaking database professionals (including Donald Chamberlin himself) use the acronym -like pronunciation of / ˈ s iː k w əl / ("sequel"), mirroring the language's prerelease development name, "SEQUEL". The SQL standard has gone through a number of revisions: The standard is commonly denoted by

4968-455: Was defined simply as "a set of services available to a programmer for performing certain tasks" by technologist Carl Malamud . The idea of the API was expanded again with the dawn of remote procedure calls and web APIs . As computer networks became common in the 1970s and 80s, programmers wanted to call libraries located not only on their local computers, but on computers located elsewhere. These remote procedure calls were well supported by

5040-438: Was initially developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce after learning about the relational model from Edgar F. Codd in the early 1970s. This version, initially called SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language), was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original quasirelational database management system, System R , which a group at IBM San Jose Research Laboratory had developed during

5112-645: Was later changed to SQL (dropping the vowels) because "SEQUEL" was a trademark of the UK-based Hawker Siddeley Dynamics Engineering Limited company. The label SQL later became the acronym for Structured Query Language. After testing SQL at customer test sites to determine the usefulness and practicality of the system, IBM began developing commercial products based on their System R prototype, including System/38 , SQL/DS , and IBM Db2 , which were commercially available in 1979, 1981, and 1983, respectively. In

5184-511: Was released in 2023: April 2023 (Linux) Oracle Database Free - Developer Release September 2023 Oracle Database on Base Database Service August 2021 (Linux) April 2019 (Linux) June 2019 (cloud) July 2018 (other) March 2017 (on-premises) The Introduction to Oracle Database includes a brief history on some of the key innovations introduced with each major release of Oracle Database. See My Oracle Support (MOS) note Release Schedule of Current Database Releases (Doc ID 742060.1) for

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