Oracle introduced the first commercial relational database management system in 1979. The product was Oracle Version 2, released by the company then known as Relational Software, Inc.
The story began in 1977, when Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates founded Software Development Laboratories. Ellison had encountered research describing IBM’s work on relational databases and recognized that the emerging model could become a practical commercial product. The company developed its own implementation rather than waiting for IBM to sell one broadly.
Oracle Version 2 was designed around the relational model, which organizes information into tables and links related data through defined fields. It also used SQL, the query language that became the dominant standard for retrieving and manipulating relational data. IBM had pioneered much of the underlying research, but Oracle reached the commercial market first with a SQL-based relational DBMS.
A common mix-up is the company’s name: Oracle was not yet called Oracle Corporation in 1979. Software Development Laboratories became Relational Software, Inc. that year, and adopted the Oracle name in 1983. “Oracle” remains the canonical answer because it was the product and brand that became associated with this breakthrough.