Company History & Government Roots
Trace how this company developed and how its relationship with government, public funding, federal research, contracts, acquisitions, and political institutions evolved over time.
1970
IBM researcher Edgar F. Codd published “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks,” establishing the relational model that later commercial database products—including Oracle—built upon. This documents a technology lineage, not an IBM role in founding Oracle.
1970
Multiple interviews and historical accounts connect Larry Ellison and Bob Miner’s prior Ampex work to a CIA-associated project called Oracle. Publish only after reconciling the project chronology with primary archival evidence; do not describe the CIA as Oracle’s founder.
1977
Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates founded Software Development Laboratories in Santa Clara, California. Oracle’s corporate history identifies 1977 as the company’s founding year.
November 1979
In a Smithsonian oral-history interview, Larry Ellison said Oracle’s first commercial version was installed in November 1979 and identified the Advanced Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as its first customer.
1982
The company changed its name from Relational Software Inc. (formerly Software Development Laboratories) to Oracle Corporation.
Selected materials
David K. Allison · Smithsonian National Museum of American History
A first-person interview covering Oracle's founding and early commercial history.
Oral HistoryComputer History Museum
A multi-participant workshop on Oracle and the early relational database industry; some recollections require editorial reconciliation.
Editorial standard
Government connection does not by itself establish corruption, control, favoritism, or causation. Timeline descriptions distinguish government founding, research support, customers, contracts, regulation, acquisitions, and personnel movement, and link the underlying evidence.