This is a very exciting time for the information-processing industry. Companies like Oracle and Sun have led a technological revolution culminating in today's software advances. New languages such as Java, and advanced database servers such as Oracle8, provide a shift in paradigm for application developers. This new paradigm yields capabilities unparalleled in comparison to software systems of yesterday. At last we have the tools necessary to network the entire world to large database systems in a secure fashion.
A few years ago were the database wars. Several relational database vendors readied server-based systems that accommodated large user communities performed industry standard database operations. Relational and client/server became buzzwords that were served up within technical circles to add weight to otherwise weightless words. All the major database vendors adopted SQL (Structured Query Language) and the relational model. Market share was initially well-distributed among a handful of these vendors. There was no clear leader, only a race to fulfill the promise of a few important requirements. Two of these included performance—measured in transactions per second and portability. Of these, Oracle has always lead the pack. Slowly but surely, due to these and other factors, Oracle gained on the competition to become the second largest software company and the leading database vendor of today.
With the advent of Oracle8, I would like to suggest that the war has been won, and I am not an Oracle fanatic; I have used many different relational databases. Version 8 of Oracle places databases in a whole new category. Oracle8 offers several very important enhancements that take relational databases another quantum leap forward. The most significant change from Oracle7 is the implementation of objects. In fact, the database is considered to be object-relational, as opposed to its purely relational predecessors. Another significant improvement is seen in Oracle's commitment to Web computing through the NCA (network computing architecture) and the Web Application Server. With these, as well as many other enhancements from the OCI (Oracle Call Interface), improved PL/SQL, and a potpourri of GUI administration and development tools, Oracle has a real winner with this product.