Oracle 21c: What does the name mean?

The quick answer is 21c refers to Oracle's calendar year 2021 release of their "converged" database software.  The number 21 reflects the first year of publication, and the little "c" stands for converged.  I'll elaborate on both points in a minute.

Oracle Corporation is one of the world's leading makers of database software.  They were founded in 1977.  Their flagship database product is Oracle Database.  Version 1 was a private release and Version 2 was their first public release in 1979.  The latest public release Version 13 goes by name 21c.

So, what's does the name 21c mean? 

Historically, each version of Oracle was numbered sequentially from Version 1 in 1977 to Version 12 in 2013.  Within each version were two or more major releases like Version 12 had Release 12.1 followed by Release 12.2 in 2017. 

Starting in 2018 Oracle switched from sequential numbers to year-based numbers.  And so when patchset 12.2.0.2 was released in 2018 it was named 18c.  And when patchset 12.2.0.3 was released in 2019 it was named 19c.  There was no release in 2020, and so the name 20c was retired.

So, we see the number 21 means it was first released in 2021.  That's fairly logical.  What is also fairly logical is subsequent patch releases keep the number 21 regardless of the actual year of release.  If Oracle releases a patch to 21c two years later in year 2023 it will be still be called 21c.  The release number will have a dot suffix to indicate the calendar year's relative quarter, so a patch to 21c in November 2023 would be 19.11 (the 11th quarter relative to the start of calendar year 2021).

The letter "c" in 21c stands for converged.  This is not mentioned in the official documentation, at least not yet, but "c is for converged" is their marketing mantra.  Ask Oracle for a sales pitch, and you'll get the "c is for converged" speech, which runs for about an hour. 

For versions 12c through 18c Oracle advertised their cloud-centric computing model, and we were told "c is for cloud".  The little "c" was meant to remind us that Oracle knows cloud computing.  Starting with 19c Oracle's marketing campaign shifted to "the converged database". 

Converged refers to Oracle's ability for a single database to simultaneously run multiple workloads (transactional, reporting, analytics, etc.) using multiple models (Geospatial, Object, XML, JSON, etc.) with multiple tenants (applications, customers, etc).

Way back in the long ago, Oracle was often used as a Decision Support System database for running queries against data that had been downloaded from a mainframe.  Remember those days?  Oracle enabled an average person to pour through vast amounts of data without any 3GL programming skills, a compiler, punch cards, or other instruments of the day.  All you needed was a very basic understanding of the SQL SELECT statement. 

Oracle quickly grew to support many more workload types, and the world around Oracle grew to require many more data types like Objects in Oracle 8, XML in Oracle 8.1, JSON in Oracle 12.1, and Blockchain in 21c.  Rather than developing separate products for each type of workload or each type of data, Oracle Database was enhanced to support all of them.  That's what Oracle means by "converged".

In case you're keeping track, Oracle started using little letter suffixes with release 8i where the "i" stood for Internet -- Oracle 8i was the first release to have a built-in JVM and support for XML data.  It's funny that in networking the word Internet with a capital "I" refers to the global public Internet, where internet with a little "i" refers to an interconnected network (ref), but Oracle probably wasn't thinking along those lines.

Oracle switched to the letter "g" with release 10.1 and called it 10g, which denoted Oracle's grid computing architecture.  That actually upset a lot of people because Oracle was promoting one particular architecture that the rest of the industry hadn't agreed on. 

Grids were replaced by clouds, so Oracle 12.1 switched to the letter "c".  Clouds are still a big thing, but when it comes to selling software converged is a bigger thing.

We'll probably see Oracle using the letter "c" for many years to come, regardless of its meaning.

Disclaimers: I have never worked for Oracle, I have no insider information, and I own no shares of stock.  Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using DBGen to Generate TPC-H Test Data

Image
In this post I describe the Data Base Generator (DBGen) utility in terms of what it is, how to install it, and how to use it.   This post assumes a Linux operating system.   There are different build procedures for DBGen on Windows, but the concepts carry over. DBGen is used to create a TPC-H schema (i.e., it provides the CREATE TABLE statements) and to generate the data.   DBGen is used in official TPC-H benchmarking, but it can also be used in informal TPC-H-like benchmarking.   The schema and data is compatible with most 3 rd party benchmarking tools like HammerDB, so even if you plan to run a TPC-H-like test using HammerDB you may still use DBGen to create the schema and data. The  CREATE TABLE   statements are ANSI standard SQL and can be run in any DBMS without editing.   There are no SQL statements for indexes or foreign key constraints provided by DBGen since those types of objects are not required.   The data is created as delimited...
Read more

Oracle 21c Caching Solutions

This blog post reviews all of the caching solutions available in Oracle Database 21c.  I dive into several of the caching solutions, but I do try to keep things relatively short-and-sweet here.  I have other blogs dedicated to each caching solution. I don't mean the Oracle SGA or PGA.   I mean optional features you can enable to enhance performance. The content of this blog post is applicable to Oracle 12g, 18c, 19c, and 21c.   Some of the caching solutions were available in Oracle 11g, but I did not regression test my examples back that far. There have been no new caching solutions in Oracle 12g R2 through 21c.   One solution in particular, the In-Memory Column Store, has received some major enhancements.   I briefly describe it here, but the deep dive is in another blog post. Summary of Oracle Caching Solutions Oracle 21c includes six caching features as listed in my table below.   I've listed them in order from newest on top to oldest at t...
Read more

TPC-like Database Benchmarking Tools

Image
  This post describes five popular tools for benchmarking relational databases: HammerDB, Quest Benchmark Factory, SwingBench, pgbench, and Oracle RAT.  Previously, I described TPC and TPC-like benchmarks for relational databases.   Recall a benchmark is "like" a TPC benchmark if it follows some of the rules but not all of them.   The tools described in this post follow some of the TPC's rules so we call them "TPC-like".   Publishing results is generally not allowed by commercial DBMS vendors, and use of the benchmark trademark is also restricted. Ok then, let's look at the most commonly used benchmarking tools for relational databases. HammerDB is my #1 choice for benchmarking relational databases.   HammerDB supports every major DBMS on Linux and Windows including bare metal, VM, and cloud.   This means you can use one tool for all environments.   You can even compare performance across platforms or DBMS, such as comparing Oracle on Linux...
Read more