Standards at Oracle

Oracle is committed to building standards-based products to help customers reduce complexity and get the most out of their existing technology investments. We build products on standards developed by international organizations and industry consortia and strive to comply with market-accepted standards to provide our customers with interoperability, choice, and lower costs. As both a contributor and leader in open source communities, Oracle is a supporting member of the Linux Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, and the Java Community Process program, among others.

Oracle participates actively in more than 100 standards-setting organizations and more than 300 technical committees, and thousands of our employees are actively engaged in standards or open source projects. These employees contribute to efforts ranging from Java and Linux to Kubernetes.

Our standards work across global geographies and business units includes collaboration with:

• Accessibility Programs
• Government-led initiatives developing technical requirements
• Industry and technology consortia
• National, regional, and international standards-setting organizations
• Open source development organizations and projects
• Standardization-related organizations
• Standards compliance programs

Some examples of our work in standards organizations we drive and influence, including specific verticals and technologies.

Standards are in our DNA

Oracle was founded around the implementation of an open standard: SQL. Before we released a product, we were able to participate in developing the SQL standard on a level playing field with established technology companies. SQL became an ANSI standard in 1986 and an ISO standard in 1987.

Everything that we have in our cloud runs in Amazon’s cloud and other clouds that are standards-based.

Larry Ellison Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer

Contributions to the Linux kernel

Building on Oracle's longstanding commitment to open source Linux kernel development, Oracle was the top contributor to the Linux kernel in the 6.1 release cycle. Oracle's contributions to Linux span more than 20 years, with key contributions -- and maintainers -- in the areas of SCSI and iSCSI, XFS and btrfs, memory management with large pages, and even core kernel data structure. At Oracle we strive to improve Linux to ensure that our customers can rely on Linux both today and in the future, contributing both code fixes and also foundational technologies like memory folios and the Maple Tree that become the basis of further improvements.

Greg Marsden Senior Vice President, Oracle Linux

Read more about contributions to the linux kernel

Communications Standards

Imagine you are given the opportunity to design a system that supports wireless, mobile communication services. The system can, at its core, be looked at as an extension of existing landline telephony services and, as such, must support phone calls to and from any phone connected to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). These same telephony services must also be supported for calls between devices connected to the wireless, mobile network you are defining. These and other services provided by the system must work when devices are moving at vehicular speeds.

In addition, your system must support short messaging, emergency services, location services, access to the internet, and other capabilities enabled by wireless mobile devices. The system must address the regulatory requirements of countries that set aside radio spectrum for use in supporting the system you define. It must scale to support billions of devices, both consumer phones and machines accessing the Internet of Things.

Services supported by the system must be accessible from anywhere in the world that has a Radio Access Network (RAN) that conforms to the standards you define. And the system must provide services in a secure fashion, must limit access to the services provided only to those who have signed up for the services and must collect the information needed to allow the companies providing the services to be able to bill for usage of those services.

Your task is made more complicated by the requirement that the definition of the architecture, protocols, and technologies required to make this system work must be done with and agreed to by both the companies that will operate the network (your competitors) and by the suppliers (companies that are competitors amongst themselves) of the hardware and software required to build out the system you define.

On the surface this might seem like an impossible task. And this is a somewhat simplified definition of the problem solved by the 3GPP standards organization.

3GPP, which stands for Third Generation Partnership Project, was formed in 1998. Prior to 3GPP, mobile telephony standards were defined by regional telecommunications standards development organizations. These standards organizations consisted of the following:

The standards defined by these groups insured interoperability within their regions but often did not support phones roaming into another region that supported similar, but different, standards. Remember that the system you were asked to define requires that it works anywhere in the world.

The first set of standards defined by 3GPP resulted in what is referred to as the 3G cellular system. The 3GPP organization has continued to evolve these standards and has published definitions of 4G/LTE and 5G versions of the standards. And there is already talk about an emerging definition of the 6G cellular standards.

3GPP is divided into three Technical Specification Groups (TSGs).

• Radio Access Networks (RAN)
• Services and Systems Aspects (SA)
• Core Network and Terminals (CT)

Each of the TSGs are then divided into multiple working groups. The following table outlines the currently active 3GPP working groups. Definition of the 3GPP standards is done by these working groups.

3GPP does not define all the protocols that make up the 3GPP system. In many cases, the 3GPP working groups define how standards developed by other standards organizations are used by the 3GPP system.

Many of the protocols used within 3GPP standards are defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the group responsible for defining protocols such as IPv4, IPv6, TCP, TLS, http/2, Diameter, and SIP, to name a few used by the 3G, 4G and 5G 3GPP systems.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) defines lower layer protocols such as Ethernet.

The GSMA, the primary industry organization for mobile network operators, also defines standards that are focused on interoperability between network operators. As such, GSMA standards focus on issues such as how the 3GPP system is used for roaming between service providers and how reconciliation of charges happens between those services providers.

For those interested in a little late-night reading, the following are the primary specifications that describe the 3GPP 5G System. These are just the tip of the iceberg as they specify what 3GPP defines as stage 2 specifications. These specifications are developed by the SA2 and SA3 working groups and define the architecture for the 5G Core Network.

We are also engaging in the AI activities of:

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, under the US Department of Commerce)
  
  1. The Trustworthy & Responsible Artificial Intelligence Resource Center (AIRC), which includes supporting the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) and Playbook as well as other resources that cover topics such as bias/fairness and explainability. Oracle is collaborating with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium to establish a new measurement science that will enable the identification of proven, scalable, and interoperable measurements and methodologies to promote development of trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its responsible use. NIST does not evaluate commercial products under this Consortium and does not endorse any product or service used. Additional information on this Consortium can be found at: https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework
  
  2. The Generative AI Public Working Group: https://airc.nist.gov/generative_ai_wg
• The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), including the Working Party on Artificial Intelligence Governance (AIGO).
• The EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC), including Working Group 1 on Technology Standards and its AI subgroup as well as the Joint Roadmap on Trustworthy AI and Risk Management