In 1974, IBM researchers Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce published a paper entitled, SEQUEL: A structured English query language; a paper which would form the basis of a data manipulation and query language for decades to come.

While IBM had implemented SEQUEL (SQL) for use in System R, in 1979 Oracle released Oracle V2, the first commercially available database to employ the use of SQL. Over the next several years, SQL gained in popularity rivaling its primary query-language rival at the time, Ingres' QUEL. At the time, QUEL was more popular and considered to be a better overall query language. However, Ingres' creator and corporate president, Michael Stonebraker, didn't believe in standardization. As such, did not attend ANSI standardization meetings to promote QUEL as the standard. As both Oracle and IBM promoted the use of SQL and pushed for it as a standard, ANSI adopted it in 1986 as did the ISO in 1987. The rest, as they say, is history.

Many years later, Oracle has now developed the largest SQL grammar which, in addition to performing standard query operations, is also capable of managing many aspects of the database system.

Several unique SQL features found in Oracle include:

• Object-Relational Features
• SQL/XML Support
• Virtual Columns
• Virtual Indexes