Обсуждение: SAPDB/MaxDB

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SAPDB/MaxDB

От
Dirk Riehle
Дата:
Hi,

It may be a non-starter in this forum for a discussion, but I'd be
curious to know what people think about SAP's former SAPDB, now MaxDB.
This was SAP's first venture, I believe, into open source. What do you
think about it? What do you think SAP should have done back then? What
do you think SAP could or should be doing today? Could it benefit the
PostgreSQL community in anyway?

Thanks,
Dirk

----
http://www.riehle.org


Re: SAPDB/MaxDB

От
Bruce Momjian
Дата:
Dirk Riehle wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It may be a non-starter in this forum for a discussion, but I'd be
> curious to know what people think about SAP's former SAPDB, now MaxDB.
> This was SAP's first venture, I believe, into open source. What do you
> think about it? What do you think SAP should have done back then? What
> do you think SAP could or should be doing today? Could it benefit the
> PostgreSQL community in anyway?

One major problem is that the the SAPDB code was a mixture of Pascal,
Python, and C.  The directories were two letters long, and the file
names were numbers.  You combine all that, and it is easy to see why no
volunteers really got involved with the code.

Also, with PostgreSQL around, it is hard to get volunteers for a new
database project with similar goals.

--
  Bruce Momjian   bruce@momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB    http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Re: SAPDB/MaxDB

От
Christopher Browne
Дата:
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, dirk@riehle.org (Dirk Riehle) wrote:
> It may be a non-starter in this forum for a discussion, but I'd be
> curious to know what people think about SAP's former SAPDB, now
> MaxDB. This was SAP's first venture, I believe, into open source. What
> do you think about it? What do you think SAP should have done back
> then? What do you think SAP could or should be doing today? Could it
> benefit the PostgreSQL community in anyway?

As Bruce pointed out, the codebase for SAP-DB (aka MaxDB, aka
Adabas-D) was written in a simultaneous combination of:
 - mainframe acronymese
 - German
 - Pascal
 - C++
which, in the presence of custom build tools that were very much *not*
Make/autoconf, made for an enormous "learning curve" in order to get
involved with the codebase.

As far as SAP AG was concerned, the point of it was NOT for them to
get into OSS; it was for them to come up with a lever to beat on
Oracle with.

Every so often, SAP and Oracle get into fights over their
relationship; SAP sells more Oracle licenses than anyone else on the
planet, which makes for a love/hate relationship on both sides.  On
the one hand, R/3 + Oracle makes both companies a barrel of money, so
they otta love one another.  On the other hand, Oracle sells some ERP
software, and would rather get *ALL* the licensing fees.

If SAP had their own database, they could play the same game back,
hence the late-90's acquisition of Adabas-D.

In principle, SAP AG ought to be able to readily do ports of their
software to run atop PostgreSQL (just as they do on Oracle, MS-SQL
Server, Informix, Adabas-D, and DB2), as PostgreSQL has enough
functionality to host something like R/3.

I'd say that there's a little bit of danger in such interest; it means
getting in between SAP AG and Oracle Corporation, and with the amount
of competitiveness between those companies, that seems to me to be a
dangerous place to be.

MySQL AB tried getting into that spot, and Oracle spent last year
buying storage engines out from under them.

Doesn't sound like a fun place to be to me...
--
(format nil "~S@~S" "cbbrowne" "gmail.com")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/slony.html
Signs of  a Klingon Programmer -  20. "Behold, the  keyboard of Kalis!
The greatest Klingon code warrior that ever lived!"

Re: SAPDB/MaxDB

От
Lukas Kahwe Smith
Дата:
Christopher Browne wrote:

Chris comments are spot on. In my thesis paper [1] I came to the
conclusion that in the end SAP's best move was to hand over SAP DB to
MySQL AB, not because MySQL AB could magically make the database
relevant in the OSS space, but because both companies then lended
eachother credit ..

SAP lended MySQL AB credit in the enterprise world.
And MySQL AB lended some credit to SAP in the OSS world.

Now that MySQL is close to SAP certification, SAP is getting where they
want things to be .. they want the database market commoditized so that
Oracle does not earn tons of money they can use to hit SAP in the
CRM/ERP market with acquisitions.

Originally SAP (who still employ 100 developers for MaxDB) and MySQL AB
were planning to develop an entirely new database together. I think that
one is off the table now.

Finally MaxDB does offer some interesting features. The main one being
that they require no maintaince at all. All reindexes and structures are
immidiatly brought into optimal condition. There is nothing like
OPTIMIZE TABLE or VACUUM necessary. Their point being that the database
should work with a constant performance in 24/7 shops.

regards,
Lukas

[1] http://pooteeweet.org/blog/534

Re: SAPDB/MaxDB

От
Hans-Juergen Schoenig
Дата:
*snip*
>
>
> Finally MaxDB does offer some interesting features. The main one being
> that they require no maintaince at all. All reindexes and structures
> are immidiatly brought into optimal condition. There is nothing like
> OPTIMIZE TABLE or VACUUM necessary. Their point being that the
> database should work with a constant performance in 24/7 shops.
>
> regards,
> Lukas


theoretically this is all fine but did you every try using it?
say, something which is beyond "select * from table".
it is a nightmare. the documentation sucks and whenever something goes
wrong I'd highly suggest to quickly donate to the church to make sure
that at least god considers helping you.

i also remember funny bugs such as "i cannot replay my binary backup
because of error 43412341234123123213412412542314214").
maxdb is far from good and if you ever looked at the code in there you
will soon find out that this is not what you want to use.

to me maxdb is more of a marketing name than a serious database.


    best regards,

       hans

--
Cybertec Geschwinde & Schönig GmbH
Schöngrabern 134; A-2020 Hollabrunn
Tel: +43/1/205 10 35 / 340
www.postgresql.at, www.cybertec.at


Re: SAPDB/MaxDB

От
"Jonah H. Harris"
Дата:
On 1/11/07, Hans-Juergen Schoenig <postgres@cybertec.at> wrote:
> theoretically this is all fine but did you every try using it?

Actually, yes.

> say, something which is beyond "select * from table".

Most certainly.

> it is a nightmare.

No it's not.

> the documentation sucks and whenever something goes
> wrong I'd highly suggest to quickly donate to the church to make sure
> that at least god considers helping you.

Nope, I've always had great support from SAP with SAP DB.

> i also remember funny bugs such as "i cannot replay my binary backup
> because of error 43412341234123123213412412542314214").

Hmm, I can think of similar bugs in EVERY other database.

> maxdb is far from good and if you ever looked at the code in there you
> will soon find out that this is not what you want to use.

While the code isn't laid out very nicely, it isn't that bad if you
know understand the subsystems.  The main PITA is the proprietary
build tools/environment... I recall having major issues getting their
translator to work on FreeBSD.

> to me maxdb is more of a marketing name than a serious database.

Disagree.

--
Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324
EnterpriseDB Corporation            | fax: 732.331.1301
33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor            | jharris@enterprisedb.com
Iselin, New Jersey 08830            | http://www.enterprisedb.com/