Re: MaxDB = SAPDB = ADABAS (was: Sorts (revised)

From: Richard (riplin_at_Azonic.co.nz)
Date: 07/21/04 

Date: 21 Jul 2004 00:45:37 -0700

robert.deletethis@wagner.net (Robert Wagner) wrote

> Oracle says they did it for IBM compatibility; I believe them.

Which is really strange because DB2 still uses BEGIN DECLARE and I see
no evidence that this is optional at all.

In fact it your: "Oracle dropped that in version 8 to be compatible
with IBM, which dropped it earlier." is completely the reverse.

Oracle _ADDED_ BEGIN DECLARE to be compatible with ANSI and IBM, who
had added it earlier, but Oracle left it optional depending on flags.

> A little research reveals that MaxDB/SAPDB is a rebadged ADABAS (sans Natural),
> developed by Software AG (the SAP folks)

Software AG and SAP are completely different companies.

> in the '70s for use on IBM mainframes
> and since ported to many platforms .. without success.

The Adabas-D DB, which is now MaxDB, is quite different from the
Adabas of the 70s.

> It's ironic that it no
> longer has a Cobol precompiler, since that's the environment where it was
> born.

Just because MySQL doesn't list a Cobol pre-compiler for MaxDB does
not mean that Cobol can't access MaxDB. Just use ODBC or unixODBC
with Fujitsu or a ODBC pre-compiler, such as is available for MF.
 
> It is unsuited to large tables because it insists on sucking the whole table
> into memory, which makes it fast but unscalable.

Which Adabas did that actually relate to ? More 'something I learnt
in the 70's and never bothered checking since' is it ?
 
> Involved parties are Texas A&M, long out of the picture, and Computer
> Associates, who appear to be a marketing agent milking it for cash, as is
> their wont.

You just make this stuff up. CA has Ingress and will soon be
releasing Ingress II. It does have a connection with SAP's DB, but
only with its database tools, such as ERWin, which work with a number
of databases including Adabas-D (and Oracle, Ingres, MS SQL etc).

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