Oracle is a relational database management system (RDBMS) originally built by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates in the late 70s. It was intended to be compatible with IBM's System R.
| Version | Release Date | 
|---|---|
| Version 1 (unreleased) | 1978-01-01 | 
| Oracle V2 | 1979-01-01 | 
| Oracle Version 3 | 1983-01-01 | 
| Oracle Version 4 | 1984-01-01 | 
| Oracle Version 5 | 1985-01-01 | 
| Oracle Version 6 | 1988-01-01 | 
| Oracle7 | 1992-01-01 | 
| Oracle8 | 1997-07-01 | 
| Oracle8i | 1999-02-01 | 
| Oracle9i | 2001-06-01 | 
| Oracle 10g | 2003-01-01 | 
| Oracle 11g | 2007-01-01 | 
| Oracle 12c | 2013-01-01 | 
SELECT 'Hello world!' FROM dual;
 
In Oracle's flavor of SQL, "dual is just a convienence table". It was originally intended to double rows via a JOIN, but now contains one row with a DUMMY  value of 'X'.
/* PL/SQL is a core Oracle Database technology, allowing you to build clean, secure, 
   optimized APIs to SQL and business logic. */
set serveroutput on 
BEGIN
   DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Hello World!');
END;
 
                            create table MY_table (
   what varchar2(10), 
   who varchar2(10), 
   mark varchar2(10)
);
 
insert into my_table (what, who, mark) values ('Hello', 'world', '!' );
insert into my_table values ('Bye bye', 'ponies', '?' );
insert into my_table (what) values('Hey');
 
commit;
 
select what, who, mark from my_table where what='Hello';
 
                            List employees earning more than $50000 born this century. List their name, date of birth and salary, sorted alphabetically by name.
SELECT employee_name, date_of_birth, salary
FROM   employees
WHERE  salary > 50000
   AND date_of_birth >= DATE '2000-01-01'
ORDER BY employee_name;
 
Show the number of employees in each department with at least 5 employees. List the largest departments first.
SELECT department_id, COUNT(*)
FROM   employees
GROUP BY department_id
HAVING COUNT(*) >= 5
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC;