As the years went on, Barbara found her role as Batgirl less and less fulfilling, and she eventually more or less retired. That's when the Joker showed up at her house, shooting and paralyzing her and when he kidnapped her Uncle Jim. Batman rescued Jim Gordon, but 19 year-old Barbara Gordon's career as a crime fighter was over. She spent a month in a deep depression.

Recognizing she could no longer be the kind of superhero she had been, she instead devoted all her time to developing one of the world's most complex and powerful computer systems and set to work accumulating information, renaming herself "Oracle."

Blessed with a photographic memory, Barbara reads dozens of the world's top newspapers and magazines daily. She's also constantly gathering information from other, less public sources, such as the CIA's mainframe, not to mention the data networks of the FBI, NSA and Interpol (all without their knowledge or consent).

Oracle has proven an absolutely invaluable resource to the Batman and his allies, as well as countless other superheroes, few of whom know anything about the person behind the name.

One Of Her first agents was Power Girl. However, when an early case goes awry and several deaths result from it, Power Girl blames Barbara and stops working with Oracle on a regular basis. (Although she helps Oracle occasionally, when Oracle invites Power Girl to rejoin the team after the events of Infinite Crisis, she replies that she'll do so "when Hell freezes over.")

Barbara joins forces with superhero Black Canary. The two – similar in both having lost their original abilities while fighting crime, yet managing to overcome their handicaps – would later meet in person and become best friends. The two form the nucleus of the Birds of Prey.

During No Man's Land, Barbara employed various teenagers to be her eyes and ears on the street. One of these young agents is Cassandra Cain; she later saves Jim Gordon's life. Barbara realizes that Cassandra is actually one of the world's top martial artists; it is revealed that her father, David Cain, had trained her to be a weapon from infancy. Barbara accedes to Cassandra taking up the Batgirl mantle, and becomes Cassandra's mentor.

Later The Huntress joins the team as a full-time agent, as do Lady Blackhawk and Vixen. Although the personnel on Barbara's team grows and changes, Huntress and Lady Blackhawk remain core agents.

During War Games, Batman, who is battling the Black Mask, usurps Oracle's computers and satellites. This results in the destruction of Barbara's home and headquarters in the clock tower. Subsequently, Barbara decides to move on, and leaves Gotham City altogether. She cuts her ties with Batman, and after a temporary world trip with her team, relocates to Metropolis.

After becoming infected with an advanced virus delivered by Brainiac, Barbara developed cyberpathic powers that allow her to psychically interact with computer information systems. Although she loses these abilities after the virus is renderd dormant, following an operation by Doctor Mid-Nite she discovered she can move her toes. However, this proved to be a short-lived effect, and Barbara remained paralyzed.

Although Barbara and Dick Grayson (the superhero now code-named Nightwing) re-ignite their romance, Barbara ends the relationship when she feels Dick is being over-protective of her. In truth, the villain Blockbuster is attacking all areas of Dick's life. Barbara and Dick still love each other and remain in each other's lives; after the destruction of Blüdhaven by The Society, Dick proposes and Barbara accepts.

However, their romance is cut short by the Infinite Crisis. Alexander Luthor's master plan to recreate the multiverse relies upon diverting the attention of the world's heroes.

Dick is severely injured in the battle for Metropolis, and Barbara stays by his side as he recovers. When Batman asks Dick to join him on his quest to recreate Batman, Dick is torn because of his engagement to Barbara. Barbara returns the engagement ring because she feels that Dick needs a soul-searching quest as much as his mentor, and understands that she and Dick aren't ready for marriage. Dick goes with Batman, but leaves Barbara a note, the ring, and a photograph of them as Robin and Batgirl, promising to come back to her.

A year after the events of Infinite Crisis, Oracle and her team continue to work in Metropolis. Barbara works with Batman, although not on a regular basis as before — she prefers to work primarily with her own agents.

Oracle is not immediately aware of Cassandra's retirement as Batgirl, nor her subsequent take-over of the League of Assassins. (Cassandra becomes a sore point with Oracle: she slaps Misfit, a metahuman girl pretending to be Batgirl, for merely mentioning Cassandra's name.)

Barbara continues to lead the Birds of Prey, and expanded the ranks of the operation. Black Canary leaves the team, having decided to devote herself to raising her adopted daughter, Sin. Huntress remains as the team's de facto field leader, and Big Barda has been brought in as the group's heavy-hitter alongside a larger, rotating roster.

Oracle and her team struggle for power with Spy Smasher, a government agent who has taken over the Birds of Prey organization. After the completion of a mission in Russia in which the team rescues the resurrected Ice, Barbara challenges Spy Smasher to a hand-to-hand fight: the winner takes the Birds of Prey. Although Barbara wins the fight, Spy Smasher reneges on the deal. Every agent Oracle has ever employed, male and female, appears to provide support. Black Canary leads the group and, deploying reason and threats, convinces Spy Smasher that the Birds of Prey cannot exist without Oracle in charge. Spy Smasher is forced to admit her defeat. At the end, Barbara finds Misfit, discovers she's an orphan, and adopts her into the Birds of Prey.

Barbara dispatches the Question and Batwoman to capture Trickster and Piper following their role in the murder of the Flash. She struggles to keep the identities of the world's heroes from being stolen and coordinates the response to a global crisis engineered by the Calculator, a villainous hacker and information broker. At the same time, the Legion of Super-Heroes members Karate Kid and Triplicate Girl storm her headquarters, demanding her assistance. Unfortunately, Oracle was busy trying to keep Calculator from hacking her system, and so she attempted to send them away. After defeating the lesser computer hacker, Oracle runs a series of test on Karate Kid and discovers that he is dying of some unknown illness, and she then sends him out to locate someone who might be able to help him.

Later, after discovering that Green Arrow has proposed to Black Canary, Oracle tries to talk Dinah out of the marriage, reminding her of all the times that Oliver cheated and hurt her. In the end however Dinah states that her love for Oliver is too deep to just give up. Dinah then asks Oracle to be her maid of honor at the wedding, which Oracle agrees to do.

During Final Crisis, Darkseid who has finally gained control of the Anti-Life Equation attempts to put the mind-control equation on the Internet. Both Oracle and Mister Terrific make desperate attempts to stop Darkseid, even attempting to shut down the entire Internet. Unfortunately, they both fail and those affected ended up mindless slaves of Darkseid.

Freed from Darkseid control after the restoration of the Multiverse, she attempts to shut down the criminal Unternet set up by her opposite number, the Calculator, as a Darkseid-free replacement for the regular Internet and still used by tech-savvy criminals. However, the Calculator, preventing her moves, takes control of the Kilgre, gaining the ability to thrive in cyberspace by controlling digital and cybernetic avatars, and tracks Oracle down with his newfound powers. Even though Oracle foils him, she starts doubting her abilities and fears she's losing her edge and brilliance, which results in her disbanding the Birds of Prey team to do some soul-searching.

After the death of Bruce Wayne, Oracle has returned back to Gotham, and although the Birds of Prey are disbanded, she continues to summon them to help Nightwing and Robin deal with the growing crime in Gotham.

The Calculator's plans finally come to their fruition, and Kuttler, hoping to save her dying daughter Wendy takes on the Babbage alias and begins prowling the digital world of Alta Viva, a virtual world game, for fragments of the Anti-Life Equation unleashed by Darkseid.

Oracle, now living in a dilapidated condo in Gotham, becomes aware of Kuttler's activities when Cheesefiend, one of her informants, is brutally killed, with the Anti-Lfe Equation itself, after coming in contact with Babbage.

Hoping to stop the Calculator and prevent him from piecing together the fragments of the Anti-Life Equation in his possession, Oracle travels to Hong Kong, hoping to steal them back by the means of an advanced supercomputer programmed to track the chunk of data left behind by Babbage. However the Calculator discovers her attempts, swearing vengeance upon her. She manages to defeat Calculator, curing the Anti-Life Equation's fragments.

Working with Leslie Thompkins, Barbara has begun to mentor the Calculator's daughter, Wendy, who was crippled following an attack at the Titans Tower, which took the life of her brother Marvin. It's during this time that Barbara's became aware that Cassandra Cain has once again stepped down from the role of Batgirl, and has been replaced by Stephanie Brown. Barbara has taken it upon herself to train the new Batgirl.