MaxDB is an

ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...

SQL-92 SQL-92 was the third revision of the SQL database query language. Unlike SQL-89, it was a major revision of the standard. Aside from a few minor incompatibilities, the SQL-89 standard is forward-compatible with SQL-92. The standard specificatio ...

(entry level) compliant relational database management system ( RDBMS) from

SAP AG Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is ...

, which was also delivered by

MySQL AB MySQL AB was a Swedish software company founded in 1995. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008, Sun was in turn acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010. MySQL AB is the creator of MySQL, a relational database management system, as well as ...

from 2003 to 2007. MaxDB is targeted for large SAP environments e.g. mySAP Business Suite, and other applications that require enterprise-level database functionality.

History

The database development started in 1977 as a research project at the Technical University of Berlin headed by Rudolf Munz. In the early 1980s it became a database product that subsequently was owned by Nixdorf Computer, Siemens-Nixdorf,

Software AG Founded in 1969, Software AG is an enterprise software company with over 10,000 enterprise customers in over 70 countries. The company is the second largest software vendor in Germany, and the seventh largest in Europe. Software AG is traded on t ...

and today by

. It has at various times been named VDN, RDS, Reflex, Supra 2, DDB/4, Entire SQL-DB-Server and Adabas D. In 1997 SAP acquired the software from Software AG and developed it as SAP DB, releasing the source code under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

in October 2000. In 2003 SAP AG and MySQL AB jointly re-branded the database system to MaxDB. In October 2007 this reselling agreement was terminated and sales and support of the database reverted to SAP. SAP AG now manages MaxDB development, distribution, and support. New versions of the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

of MaxDB are no longer available under the GNU General Public License. SAP also stated that "Further commercial support concepts to cover mission critical use requirements outside of SAP scenarios are currently subject to discussion." MaxDB since version 7.5 is based on the code base of SAP DB 7.4. Therefore, the MaxDB software version 7.5 can be used as a direct upgrade of previous SAP DB versions starting 7.2.04 and higher

Features

MaxDB is delivered with a set of administration and development tools. Most tools are available with both a

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

and command line interface (CLI). It offers bindings for

JDBC Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is an application programming interface (API) for the programming language Java, which defines how a client may access a database. It is a Java-based data access technology used for Java database connectivity. I ...

; ODBC; SQLDBC (native C/C++ interface); precompiler;

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...

;

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

;

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

;

WebDAV WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for con ...

;

OLE DB OLE DB (''Object Linking and Embedding, Database'', sometimes written as OLEDB or OLE-DB), an API designed by Microsoft, allows accessing data from a variety of sources in a uniform manner. The API provides a set of interfaces implemented using ...

, ADO,

DAO Dao, Dão or DAO may refer to: * Tao (Chinese: "The Way" 道), a philosophical concept * Dao (Chinese sword) (刀), a type of Chinese sword * Dao (Naga sword), a weapon and a tool of Naga people People and language * Yao people, a minority ethni ...

, RDO and .NET via ODBC; Delphi and

Tcl TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company **TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

via Third Party Programming Interfaces. MaxDB is

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

, offering releases for HP-UX,

IBM AIX AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced , "ay-eye-ex") is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Background Originally released for the IBM RT PC RISC ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, Solaris,

Microsoft Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officiall ...

, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, and up to

Microsoft Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

. MaxDB offers built-in hot backup, does not need any online reorganizations and claims to be SQL 92 Entry-Level compatible. MaxDB since version 7.7.00, uses

multiversion concurrency control Multiversion concurrency control (MCC or MVCC), is a concurrency control method commonly used by database management systems to provide concurrent access to the database and in programming languages to implement transactional memory. Description ...

(MVCC) instead of the previous lock based implementation.

Licensing

MaxDB was licensed under the

(GPL) from versions 7.2 through 7.6. Programming interfaces were licensed under the GPL with exceptions for projects released under other

open source license An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified and/or shared under defined terms and conditions. This allows end users and commercial compa ...

s. SAP DB 7.3 and 7.4 were licensed as GPL but with LGPL drivers. MaxDB 7.5 was offered under dual licensing, i.e. licensed as GPL with GPL drivers or a commercial license. From version 7.5 through version 7.6 onwards distribution of MaxDB (previously SAP DB) to the open source community was provided by MySQL AB, the same company that develops the open-source software database,

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

. Development was done by SAP AG,

and the

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

community. In October 2007 SAP assumed full sales and commercial support for MaxDB. MaxDB 7.6 is now

closed source Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and inte ...

, available free-of-charge (without support, and with usage restrictions) for use with non-SAP applications.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://maxdb.sap.com/
MaxDB Wiki
on

SAP Community Network SAP Community Network (SCN) is the official user community of SAP SE. SAP software users, developers, consultants, mentors and students use the SAP Community Network to get help, share ideas, learn, innovate and connect with others. There are an av ...

SAP MaxDB - The SAP Database System
discussions, blogs, documents and videos on th
SAP Community Network (SCN)
Proprietary database management systems SAP SE

History

Features

Licensing

See also

References

External links