* James Abrahamson, a retired Air Force...

* James Abrahamson, a retired Air Force general who once headed the Strategic Defense Initiative program, will leave his position as an executive vice president of Hughes Aircraft Co. to become chairman of Oracle Corp., a Redwood City computer software company.

Abrahamson, 59, will assume the job as part of an unusual reshuffling in which company founder Lawrence J. Ellison will relinquish the chairman’s post but remain as president and chief executive. The two executives will share a new “office of the chairman.”

Oracle supplies database management software for large computer systems.