As a true geek, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that perhaps the greatest motion picture franchise of all time — Star Wars — was born thirty years ago today. But how does one go about writing about Star Wars on a blog dedicated to Oracle technology? What’s the tie in?

Fortunately, Oracle made it easy for me. Yesterday, as fans around the globe — some dressed up as members of the rebellion, others dressed as Imperial loyalists — gathered to celebrate the 30th birthday of Star Wars, Oracle was quick to boast about its relationship with George Lucas’ Lucasfilm Digital Arts Center.

According to Oracle, the artists at Lucasfilm and Indistrial Light and Magic (ILM) use a 100TB Oracle data warehouse to design, manipulate, access and store the complex images that go into creating everything from fast-paced lightsaber fights to outer space battle scenes.

Oracle says the data warehouse — which stores every image ever seen in a Star Wars film or game — is connected to more than 1,500 workstations and receives 20 million daily requests.

“Every shot that leaves ILM generates thousands, if not tens of thousands, of rows in their Oracle data warehouse as it passes through their asset and render management pipelines,” Oracle said in a press release.

Now, if only we could get into that data warehouse and remove all references to Jar Jar Binks — because as far as I’m concerned, he never happened.

– Mark Brunelli