Hey group, I have two beginner's questions for you:
* what does "Adabas" (i. e. the name) actually mean; if it's an
acronym, what does it stand for?
* what, briefly, are the principal differences between Adabas and
Adabas-D? I read somewhere that the D stands for "desktop", so that
the D would indicate a scaled-down version of the original software,
but I couldn't find any confirmation for this on Software AG's web
site.
I hope these questions are easy as pie for you pros out there to
answer -- many thanks in advance from this humble newbie.

Karl Self wrote:
Once upon a time, Software AG bought the SQL database system DDB/4 from
Siemens-Nixdorf. Its own database Adabas was strong on mainframes, but there
wasn't much success in the upcoming Unix + SQL market. The acquisition was
first named Entire SQL and then Adabas D to profit from the Adabas name.

As success with Adabas D in the Unix market wasn't stellar either, an
attempt was made to market it as a workgroup/desktop database.

The sources were also sold to SAP AG, where it became SAP DB and later MaxDB
(http://www.mysql.com/maxdb).

The two products come from totally different source bases.

Daniel

It's an acronym for "adaptable database system".


The two have nothing in common.

ADABAS-D is a relational database while the "original" ADABAS
doesn't have this restriction, thus making it the fastest database on
the market.