Why are Oracle table/column/index names limited to 30 characters?

Question

I can understand that many years ago there would be this kind of limitation, but nowadays surely this limit could easily be increased. We have naming conventions for objects

Answer 1

I believe that the 30 character identifier length comes from COBOL which was standardised in the late 1950s. Since COBOL programs were the main user of SQL (and SEQUEL before that (and QUEL before that)), this must have seemed like a reasonable number for the identifier length.