SAPDB 7.3.00.20 Released

Christopher B. Brown writes: " SAPDB.org reports the release of a new version. It stomps rather a lot of bugs and lists quite a few added features, though few leap out as being worthy of vast excitement. SAP DB was once sold as Adabas-D, and while it's certainly less famous than Oracle, it is likely more nearly comparable from a technical perspective to Oracle than just about any other DBMS available on Linux. Some components are licensed under the GPL, libraries typically under the LGPL. The challenge in its deployment lies in the fact that they use a highly customized set of development tools to script the rather daunting compile process instead of traditional Unix tools like Make. There is a small army of developers from SAP Labs (they're hiring people ) so that this may become increasingly credible as an alternative to the expensive DBMSes over time, and it's available freely already..."

Adabas/SAPDB -- Relational and Hierarchical

[fm6]

I find it interesting that the SAPDB site advertises the app as a "relational database". Adabas is in all the textbooks as an example of a hierarchical database [aol.com]. Presumably there's some layer somehwere that translates the hierarchies into tuples, so that an SQL query will work.

Re:Adabas/SAPDB -- Relational and Hierarchical

[MaxQuordlepleen]

Interesting. I ordered the CD when they first made it available, but I haven't done much with it. Anybody have any idea about performance and features vs. other databases?

Probably more interesting though is whether this thing is going to grow legs or not. My probably uninformed opinion is that it's less likely to be heavily community-developed because of the weird codebase, if it was written in pure C it would probably stand a better chance of wide developer interest...

Re:Adabas/SAPDB -- Relational and Hierarchical

[JabberWokky]

Adabas is in all the textbooks as an example of a hierarchical database

I wonder if that would help it map to XML data better (not thinking at the moment, but as a development direction).

--
Evan

Re:Adabas/SAPDB -- Relational and Hierarchical

[Pitchfork]

There are two different Version from Adabas from Software AG (the ones making Adabas).

- Adabas, the hierarchical database
- and Adabas D the relational. Adabas D is packaged with Suse Linux and StarOffice 5.2.

SAP DB is based from Adabas D. From my (somewhat limited) experience SAP DB has much better support and more features than the original Adabas D. Adabas D is still sold from Software AG and not that cheap, so if you are interested in either of the two I'd go for SAP DB.

Btw, SAP DB does not come with any form of official support (unless you pay for it together with the license for SAP R/3) but the developers are very active and responsive on their mailing list.

Another comment to make: SAP DB is used in commercial situations to run SAP R/3 the business application framework from SAP in quite a lot of companies. The standard databases for R/3 are Oracle,DB2,etc. but the existence of an supported installment of SAP R/3 on SAP DB is a strong vote for this database.

ADABAS/C is what some just call ADABAS.

[emes]

ADABAS/C is not really a hierarchical database, rather it is a file management system with commands that implement a query structure on top of the file management. SQL queries are possible using add-on modules. ADABAS/D is a fully-relational database, running on Linux since 1996, and included in Staroffice 5.2. Regrettably, Software AG, the producer of ADABAS/D, has demonstrated no real commitment to the product in the US, preferring to focus its energies on its XML database known as Tamino and of course the classic line of its products associated with mainframes, ADABAS/C and Natural(a 4GL).

SAP DB is one of the few databases on Linux that is being run for core business financial functions through its application in 800 customer installations of SAP R/3, its enterprise resource planning(ERP, reread accounting) system software. It really is amazing to see such a piece of software released largely under GPL.

SAP does not yet understand the culture of open source very well in that they refuse to publish the source code to the password management routines, and refuse to document certain modes of operation such as LiveCache, Data Warehouse, and Content Server. This is most unfortunate, given what these functions can offer. One can hope that over time they will become more comfortable with the full process.

AdabasD in StarOffice

[thegoldenear]

AdabasD is the database in StarOffice 5.2 and presumably StarOffice 6.0 (allthough not in OpenOffice, presumably the licenses don't integrate). I've never used it in either. Sun are never forthcoming in their documentation on anything to do with bringing AdabasD into StarOffice...anyone know anything about how its repackaged and integrated or anything else?

DB2?

[oingoboingo]

it is likely more nearly comparable from a technical perspective to Oracle than just about any other DBMS available on Linux

You've never seen DB2 on Linux? IBM is arguably Oracle's strongest competitor in the RDBMS market, and DB2 is fully available and supported on Linux...even the EEE (clustering) version. I'm taking a wild shot here, but I'd guess that DB2 7.2 is probably more a technical match for Oracle 8/9 on Linux than SAP DB is.