Construct · 4 fields · 8 citations
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In the theory of computation, an oracle is an abstract device imagined to answer a specified question instantly and without error, letting a machine be studied as if it had free access to solutions of some problem. Turing's 1939 Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals introduced this idea, supposing a machine supplied with an oracle that returns the answer to a number-theoretic question in a single step, and Baker, Gill, and Solovay's 1975 relativization results used oracle machines to show that the P versus NP question can be answered either way depending on which oracle is provided. The referent is a mathematical construct used to measure what one problem can compute relative to another, not a prophetic shrine, a check on a program's output, or a real-world data service.[1][2]
In software testing, the oracle is the source of the correct expected result against which a program's actual output is judged, so that a run can be declared a pass or a failure. Howden's 1978 Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Program Testing is among the earliest works to treat the oracle as a distinct part of a test, Weyuker's 1982 On Testing Non-Testable Programs examined cases where no practical oracle exists, and Barr, Harman, McMinn, Shahbaz, and Yoo's 2015 survey named and mapped the resulting oracle problem. The referent is a means of deciding whether observed program behaviour is right, not a shrine of prophecy, an idealised query device in a proof, or a feed of external data.[3][4][5]
In blockchain and smart-contract systems, an oracle is a service that supplies external, real-world information, such as a price, a weather reading, or an event outcome, to a contract that otherwise runs only on data already recorded on the chain. Xu, Pautasso, Zhu, Gramoli, Ponomarev, Tran, and Chen's 2016 The Blockchain as a Software Connector described the oracle as the trusted bridge between the chain and the outside world, and Zhang, Cecchetti, Croman, Juels, and Shi's 2016 Town Crier built an authenticated data feed to deliver such information to contracts. The referent is a data-delivery component in a distributed ledger, judged by the trustworthiness of what it reports, not an ancient shrine, an abstract query device, or a checker of program output.[6][7]
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Social anthropology
the Azande poison oracle, in which a fowl's death or survival after being given poison answers a question, studied as a coherent system of thought.In social anthropology, oracle refers to the Azande poison oracle, in which a fowl's death or survival after being given poison answers a question, studied as a coherent system of thought. This meaning comes from Evans-Pritchard (1937) in Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande.[8]