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SAP DB Database To Be GPLed?
martin-k writes: "German newsticker www.heise.de reports that SAP will announce tomorrow the GPL release of SAP DB, a database based on Software AG's Adabas. Have a look at www.heise.de but be sure to have Babelfish handy - it's in German." Babelfish is at Altavista - but the translation is bad. As far as I can tell, it sounds like they are expecting the announcement tomorrow, at LinuxWorld Germany, with the license being either the GPL or the LGPL. If you are fluent in German, please post a little more in the comments. From what I can tell it's not their flagship, but one of the parts of one, or another database?
Sorry, step, but I'm even more cynical. Maybe they're seeing competition from Oracle increasing, and wanted to streamline? Then they can just dump the DB developers and concentrate efforts on SAP R/3.
Then again, I may be speaking out of my arse.
--
For those who don't know, SAP R/3 is their flagship product and is the leading ERP system in use today. It competes with the likes of Baan and Peoplesoft. All (or most) of the data that the R/3 system (often a cluster of machines running any number of related applications) is stored on a central database. At one point, this was Oracle or SAP DB.
I seem to recall SAP ditching their relationship with Oracle (because Oracle decided to compete with SAP), and going exclusively with SAP DB. However, SAP DB isn't notoriously standards compliant, and we had to write a bunch of specific code to deal with its idiosyncracies.
But SAP as a company has been trying to embrace Linux and the Web, so maybe this is an attempt at getting a better feel for the Open Source community with a component that could only stand to benefit from additional resources.
I don't know about anyone else, but I know I won't be looking at that source code.
Cheers,
Brian
Interesting - some more details are at http://www.adabas.com/overv11.htm - as well as Oracle compatibility, it has Access database migration as one interesting feature, along with JDBC, ODBC, Perl DBI, Tcl/Tk support, and so on.
I wasn't aware that SAP had acquired Adabas-D, but it looks quite useful - certainly quite fully featured.
It was pretty likely that many of the companies spending lots on Adabas-D were running R/3 on top of it, in which case it makes sense for the DB to jump over to SAP as it is effectively being used as an "embedded" database, not as a fullscale product in its own right. For SAP to "own" it means that they can have more control over integration between R/3 and SAP-DB, which is useful. And if SAP owns it, then all the money for licensing flows to SAP.
With the somewhat limited use of SAP DB (compared to Oracle, DB/2, Informix, ...), and the difficulty of pushing into a pretty saturated market, it makes as much sense as anything for SAP AG to not worry about getting any licensing revenue from SAP DB, and just give it away. If it gives the vicarious thrill of injuring Oracle a little bit, and injuring Microsoft a little bit, that may be a nice bonus. :-)
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
With iTranslator I get this translation...
SAP goes OpenSource The SAP wants to care after c't-Informationen for the LinuxWorld in Frankfurt known tomorrow that she/it her/its/their data bank SAP DB under the GPL respectively LGPL will put. The SQL-Datenbank come in the connection with the flagship of the Walldorfer company, him/it, until now mainly Merchandise-economic system SAP R3, to the usage. R3 offers however also matching units for others Data banks like Informix, Oracle or DB2. With SAP DB, the SAP gives a bigger for the first time Software-project in the source code free.
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I would bet that this move is all about SAP chafing under their relationship with Oracle. On the one hand, they are heavily dependent on Oracle RDBMS as a component, on the other hand, Oracle is, successfully as of late, competing with SAP with their Oracle Apps.
It's a complicated world out there. Lately, SAP have been aligning themselves more and more with Microsoft. Ellison has declared war on .net with their own, yet to be named, internet-based distributed application framework. SAP is taking a shot at Oracle with this move, I think, but doing it in a way that doesn't put them too close to Microsoft. You can hardly be considered a friend of Microsoft by GPLing applications, with Microsoft's forays into the Linux world rumored and real, this may be changing, however.
Sure, you could have always used this database with your SAP R/3 installation, but now SAP might benefit from Open Source development of it and Oracle will have to fend off yet another Open Source RDBMS.
All pure speculation...
-Jordan Henderson
In the even more ancient past (which is really quite some time ago; possibly before some readers were born!), the mainframe-based R/2 system was able to use Adabas on mainframes.
If SAP DB is GPLed (or LGPLed), this is a very interesting thing, probably moreso than the "freeing" of Interbase, as Adabas-D was more like a "scaled down mainframe system" than like a "scaled up PC system."
Another interesting property of Adabas-D that is hopefully inherited by "Free-SAP-DB" is that it provides an Oracle SQL compatibility mode that tries hard to provide equivalent functionality to Oracle... Probably useful for porting Oracle apps over to it...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
When they say "GPL Release" of thier database does that mean a different version is being released OR are they GPL'ing thier current DB? There is a vast difference.
"Here is my dumb-downed, run-of-the-mill GPL database"
OR
"Here is my wonderful database, that we have poured our heart and soul into and now we are going to release IT under the GPL"
Hopefully I am making some sense...
According to informations from the german computer magazine c't, the SAP company will make an announcement tomorrow at the LinuxWorld conference in Frankfurt. They will publish their database ('SAP DB') under the GPL (or LGPL) license. Up to now, this database has been mainly used together with the company's flagship product, SAP R3. However, R3 also provides interfacing to other database systems like Informix, Oracle or DB2. SAP DB is the first large scale software product whose source code has been made public by SAP.
from a link here:t m
h tm
http://www.sap.com/solutions/technology/index.h
this is the SAP DB:
http://www.sap.com/solutions/technology/sap_db.
It's the backend for there mainproduct R3 (?)
New things are always on the horizon
SAP themselves do not develop on SAP DB. SAP themselves use DB2 for all development.
It seems to me that they are doing this for not because it is a good product but they do not want to develop it anymore.
Most SAP instalations do run on Oracle, DB2 or MS-SQL.
This is big news as it is the first ERP database to be GPLed.
-pf
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