People who are new to the world of Oracle are often curious about the different versions available and what their letter suffixes (the "g" in 11g, for instance) actually mean. As we mentioned previously, the first release of Oracle Database was Oracle 2. Oracle continued the standard approach of numbering subsequent major releases of the Oracle database with increasing number values until Version 8. With Version 8i, Oracle began suffixing their version numbers with abbreviations to align their products with their marketing focus. The "i" in 8i stands for "internet" as that version contains many features that facilitate the use of the Oracle database as the backend for Internet applications. The ninth major version of Oracle was similarly named Oracle 9i. With the release of the tenth version of Oracle in 2004, Oracle suffixed the letter "g" (short for "grid") to the version, naming the release "10g", to align their product with the grid computing market. Version 11g followed this pattern as well. With the current focus on cloud computing, it is speculated that Oracle Database Version 12 will be named, "12c", for "cloud."

Apart from the common release name, since Version 8i, Oracle Database products have been versioned in an extended form as well. While the database may be "11g," its proper version name may be 11.2.0.2.0. The following table shows what this long version number of Version 11.2.0.2.0 describes:

The Application server release number (the third decimal digit) is used only for application server releases and doesn't apply to the database version. Rather, it's a way for Oracle to standardize release naming across its product family. The platform-specific release number (the last decimal digit) applies only when a certain platform requires a release that only applies to that platform and not others. Additionally, Oracle database versions are often referred to by the information in the first two decimal digits of their version. So, if our database is Version 11.2.0.2.0, we might say that we're running Oracle 11g Release 2. If our version is 10.1.0.3.0, we could refer to it as Oracle 10g Release 1. Moving to a later major release of the database is usually referred to as an upgrade while a later release of any other components (the other digits) is referred to as a patch.