Comment SAP DB is a dead end (Score 2, Insightful) 457
SAP DB is a code fork of ADABAS-D, a database developed by "Software AG" in Germany. Initially, Software AG was meant to develop the database and SAP would sell it together with R/[2|3]. But ADABAS aka. SAP DB was buggy and unsuitable for larger installations.
Soon, the Internet came and everybody at SAP started loving Java. But the JDBC driver of ADABAS was (and still is) a big mess. The developers at SAP had spent their time fixing Software AG's bugs. Now, they had a stable database but no connection to their new applications ...
Incidentally, it was fashionable at that time to "give something away for free" if you were a big IT company so SAP decided to open-source SAP DB because it was no threat to their business and they had failed to replace Oracle etc. anyway.
SAP DB is a very good RDBMS and SAP is supporting it. But it just came too late to replace Oracle et.al. at SAP's customers and it came too late to compete against MySQL and Postgres on the "open source market".
However, since it's almost identical to earlier ADABAS-D versions, it's very popular among ADABAS users since Software AG changed their licensing policy for ADABAS-D ;-)
Rapunzel
Soon, the Internet came and everybody at SAP started loving Java. But the JDBC driver of ADABAS was (and still is) a big mess. The developers at SAP had spent their time fixing Software AG's bugs. Now, they had a stable database but no connection to their new applications
Incidentally, it was fashionable at that time to "give something away for free" if you were a big IT company so SAP decided to open-source SAP DB because it was no threat to their business and they had failed to replace Oracle etc. anyway.
SAP DB is a very good RDBMS and SAP is supporting it. But it just came too late to replace Oracle et.al. at SAP's customers and it came too late to compete against MySQL and Postgres on the "open source market".
However, since it's almost identical to earlier ADABAS-D versions, it's very popular among ADABAS users since Software AG changed their licensing policy for ADABAS-D
Rapunzel
