INGRES (Interactive Graphics and Retrieval System)

INGRES (Interactive Graphics and Retrieval System) first prototype was created by Professor Michael Stonebraker of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences of the University of California, Berkeley in 1973.  This is years after Dr. E.F. Codd originally proposed the relational model for database.   The Ingres database began development soon afterwards under the guidance of Michael Stonebraker and Eugene Wong at UC Berkeley.  The Berkeley Ingres project produced an early prototype in 1974. 

Professor Stonebraker formed Relational Technology, Inc., (RTI) to market a commercial version of INGRES in 1980. The original INGRES only supported QUEL as a query language. INGRES 4.0 (or maybe 5.0, circa 1986) introduced support for SQL in a translation layer. RTI INGRES 6.0 (circa 1988 / 89) supported SQL natively.

Professor Stonebraker also help to define Postgres - Post"in"gres.  By the way, the relation between Ingres and Postgresql is VERY distant, and pretty much of historical interest only. I've seen both codelines, and there is almost nothing in common between them any more.

RTI was renamed Ingres Corporation and in 1990 Ingres was acquired by ASK to form ASK/Ingres.  ASK/Ingres was acquired by Computer Associates of US$310 million in 1994 and was renamed to CA/Ingres.

Ingres II is a relational database management system (DBMS) from Computer Associates that runs on Windows NT, OpenVMS and most Unix platforms, including Linux. Ingres is an industrial-strength DBMS that is ODBC compliant.  The Ingres II family of products now goes by the name Advantage Ingres Enterprise Relational Database.

On August 2004, Computer Associates released its Ingres r3 database as open-source software.  Ingres r3 for Linux and Windows is available under an open-source licence called CA Trusted Open Source License. The licence allows others to view the source code of the database, download the software for free, and incorporate it into other software bundles that are licensed under CA's open-source licence.  CA has four paid support offerings around the database that offer legal indemnification.

Updated On: 15.02.17