Chapter 529 Relational Database Market Situation

At this stage, the company's annual sales have exceeded 10 million US dollars. This level is about the same as the top successful software companies in the personal computer industry.

But don't forget that databases are mainly served by big customers, and the profits far exceed products on the personal computer platform.

There is no doubt that Zheru, which was established two years earlier than Tang Huan's, is fully qualified to be dubbed the title of "successful enterprise".

However, in the first few years, like other startups, it was like walking on eggshells. This can be seen from the two changes of its company name.

In addition to relying on the extraordinary ability of the founder, the rise of the company is largely due to the ride on the rise of relational databases.

Human needs for data collection, storage, and analysis have existed since ancient times. The most famous example is the U.S. census, but the tools used were still punched cards and card tabulation processors until 195.

With the rise and maturity of computer application technology, data processing has finally entered a new stage of development, and database management systems have emerged as the times require, forming a huge market with inestimable commercial value.

To calculate the data, m.≌★om computer processing, it must be abstracted through mathematical means, thus summarizing different structural models.

For example, a network database, as the name suggests, the association between data is as crisscross as in reality.

The earliest commercial product of network database is the ids running on the mainframe platform launched by General Electric Company of the United States in 1964. Other well-known implementations include Hewlett-Packard's image and idms.

Among them, the one with the highest commercial achievement is idms, which has brought annual sales of over 100 million US dollars to the company in the past two years.

Another example is a layered database, where the relationship between data is further abstracted into a model similar to a family tree.

The most famous layered database commercial product. IMS was launched by ibm in the late 1960s.

No matter the mesh database. Still a layered database. As the scale of the database expands, the connection between data will be so complicated that even the administrator who created the database at the beginning will be confused, which will bring great difficulties to maintenance.

Fortunately, at this time, the theory of relational database appeared.

In 1970, Edgar Frank, a researcher at IBM, published a paper entitled "a ;;; large shared data banks" - "Relational Model of Large Shared Databases",

It has laid the theoretical foundation of the relational model and has been appreciated by both academia and industry.

For this reason, Edgar Frank Codd is known as "the father of relational database". And received the Turing Award in 1981.

When the academic debate on who is better between networked databases and relational databases ended with the latter winning, the topic of turning relational databases from theoretical achievements into software implementations was immediately placed in front of researchers.

——Honeywell was the first to achieve the commercial results of relational databases. It launched mdrs in 1976, but the market performance was average.

As the first company to propose a relational model, IBM will certainly not lag behind. It has specially formed a team of 40 people to develop a relational database and named it the "r" system. That is, the meaning comes from the first letter of the English word "relationship".

In 1974, the ibm R & D team won the first battle. Successfully developed Structured Query Language or SQL for relational databases.

By 1977, the "r" system was operational.

But ibm, which has a serious bureaucratic style, made an old mistake again. Its layered database ims was selling hot at that time, which brought a lot of money to the company, so it naturally suppressed the commercial operation of the "r" system.

Ever since, the outside world only saw the R&D personnel of the "r" system frequently publish academic papers, but did not see IBM actively launching marketing activities.

In this way, ibm gave the other two relational databases - ingres and , a chance to get ahead.

Ingres was jointly developed by a group of government-funded professors at the University of California, Berkeley. In order to develop Zheru's own database ebase, Tang Huan poached some of them.

Ingres's R&D team and IBM's "r" R&D team are familiar with each other, so they often conduct technical exchanges and develop a set of relational database language Quel similar to SQL.

The two groups also committed the problem of ignorance of literati, and quarrels broke out from time to time, and then accused each other of plagiarizing their solutions.

In the end, the two parties simply parted ways, and fought each other with real knives and guns.

In 1980, several people in the Ingres R&D team established Relational Technology Co., Ltd. to carry out the commercial operation of the Ingres database.

The predecessor of the software development laboratory - sdl, its original intention was to make extra money conveniently.

At that time, the company Larry Ellison worked for had to develop a data storage and retrieval device, and the workload was very heavy.

Therefore, Larry Ellison successfully traveled to the company for business outsourcing, and co-founded SDL with his former colleagues Bob Miner and Ed Oates. After taking over the job, the three of them made a lot of money. Pen.

After that, Larry Ellison left the company to concentrate on running his own sdl.

He also moved his office to the heart of Silicon Valley and changed its name to Relational Software, Inc., to reflect the relational database the company was developing.

Unlike Ingres, which has its own relational database language, Quel, Tang Huan's ebase also has a similar choice, borrowing from IBM's SQL.

As a pioneer in the commercialization of relational databases. Databases naturally get some first-mover advantage.

for example. The CIA took the initiative to come to the door. name to buy this product. At the same time, Larry Ellison also found another major client - Naval Intelligence.

The first version of the operating platform is the pdp-11, while the versions required by the central intelligence agency and the office of naval intelligence are ibm mainframes and va.

These two products are not cheap, and their financial resources are not enough to buy them, but transplantation is inseparable from this environment. Larry Ellison and others can only ask their grandparents to borrow them, and even use rogue methods. Finally finished the second version.

However, at this time, there are still many problems such as wrong retrieval results, and even data loss.

At this time, Larry Ellison's personal ability was revealed. He insisted on delivering this immature product to the CIA and the Naval Intelligence Agency, making the other party his own faultfinder.

Of course, the service attitude of the company is definitely good enough, and it is always there, and if there is a mistake, it will be corrected.

It is this ingenious marketing and good service that opened up the relational database market. And set out to commercialize ingres. Special is the excellent technology and excellent quality.

In this way, China and China launched an incompatible competition.

Compared with those professors. Larry Ellison's method is obviously more clever.

Due to the fact that the names of and are very close, checks will be sent by mistake from time to time. At this time, Larry Ellison tries to delay these checks, so as to add unnecessary financial pressure to the opponent and make them complain.

In this competition, taking the lead, Larry Ellison also began to spare no effort to replace assembly language with C language, re-programmed the third version of the database, and changed the company name to .

The competition between the Internet and the Internet represents the relational database market pattern in the field of minicomputers and mainframes, and under the promotion of Tang Huan, the microcomputer database market has gradually taken shape, showing coveted commercial value.

For example, as a leader, ebase, relying on the electronic, powerful, and easy-to-use features advertised by "e", contributed 50 million US dollars in sales to Zheru in 1981 alone.

Ashton-Tate's dbase, backed by the ibm-platform, seems to be competing with Zheru's ebase, but it does not yet have the characteristics of a relational database, and it is not qualified to be ebase's opponent.

Seeing that the relational database market was booming, IBM was dumbfounded, and hurriedly caught up. After rigorous testing of the "r" system, it launched its own commercial relational database sql/ds at the end of 1981.

Big Blue did have the capital to be conservative and late-moving. In 1988, it launched a more comprehensive industrial-grade database db, and big customers agreed to buy it, which also brought back a lot of the previous disadvantages.

ebase, and db all support sql, which virtually makes this database language a de facto industry standard, and other relational database products will come closer sooner or later.

However, the current relational database manufacturers are not aware of this. Except for ebase and db, other databases are trying their best to increase the types of computer platforms they can support.

For example, starting from the fourth version, it officially supported Fangyuan Computer and ibm-, and trumpeted the portability, connectivity, and compatibility of its own products.

Portability refers to supporting many computer hardware platforms, and connectability refers to databases installed on different computers that can be connected for data communication.

As for compatibility, it means that it is compatible with db and ebase, which also use sql. This publicity gimmick inevitably has the suspicion of hugging the thigh and dipping in the light.

When Tang Huan strolled to the booth, he happened to see Larry Ellison eloquently introducing the various benefits of the database.

"This Larry Ellison looks very similar to Jobs. De, which is open to all people, is really getting more and more lively." Tang Huan joked, and asked casually, "By the way, this is the first time he has appeared. ?”

"That's my impression." Charles Simeone nodded.

"I used to concentrate on pursuing big customers, but now I'm starting to pay attention to publicity to the public. It seems that the market positioning has changed." Tang Huan thoughtfully analyzed.

"It wasn't until the third version that they began to support the feature of transactions. From this, it is not difficult to infer that their technology research and development is very limited." Watching Larry Ellison boasting, he was very happy Charles Simeone was quite disdainful of the performance.

The so-called transaction is the basic unit of recovery and concurrency control. To put it bluntly, the operations classified as a group are either completed or cancelled.

For example, the operation of transferring money from account a to account b includes at least two steps, that is, subtracting a number from account a and adding a number to account b.

This operation must be completed completely. If disasters such as unexpected power outages, system downtime, software crashes, etc. occur between the first step and the second step, it is also necessary to ensure that all invalid operations can be undone. Otherwise, the database will be in trouble.

After ebase was launched, it has supported transactional features since 1980, at least one and a half years ahead.

It is precisely because of these factors that Charles Simeone is proud of himself, and somewhat dislikes Larry Ellison's flamboyant show.

At this time, Larry Ellison got up and waved his hand. Several employees moved out a huge advertising board from behind and stood it in front of the stage, which immediately caused a commotion.

Tang Huan took a closer look, and saw a representative jet fighter in the middle, a parrot representing Ashton-Tate Company on the left, and a phoenix representing Zheru on the right—the logo of which was originally derived from "" The pattern of the free flying bird composed of two numbers and "one", later, because of the overwhelming sense of honor and catering to Tang Huan's preferences, the subordinates gradually evolved it into the oriental divine bird-phoenix.

Jet fighters fired left and right, launching several missiles to attack Parrot and Phoenix, each missile implying that the database surpassed the function of dbase and ebase.

"So arrogant!" Charles Simeone turned livid with anger, while Tang Huan looked at the complacent Larry Ellison playfully. The other party seemed to enjoy the sensational effect he had created.

The scene was full of commotion, and a few bottles of Coke were thrown from nowhere, and smashed heavily on the advertising board, and there was a sudden commotion.

Seeing this scene, the crowd became more and more noisy, causing the security guards of the exhibition to gather nervously to maintain order.

Larry Ellison wiped the drink splashed on his face, and roared angrily, "Who did it? Stand up if you have the ability!"

Tang Huanze, Charles Simeone and other subordinates looked at each other in blank dismay, wondering who was so happy and enmity, it was really exciting! (To be continued.)