Very Computer

I am a former database administrator (now retired) for the *ia Department
of Transportation.  As I remember, around January 86 I believe,  I administere
the porting of Natural 1.2 code from an IBM/MVS to 10 Vax systems.  It was the
dataentry portion of our Financial Management System.  The system was coded,
debugged, and operational on the IBM system before porting was begun.  At that
time we did a database unload of the programs, went thru an EBCDIC to ASCII
converter provided by Software AG, and loaded the programs to the Vax.  There
were problems in the syntax of the different versions of Natural at the time,
and all maps had to be catalogued individually.  The system was copied to 10
district offices using Vaxes with Natural and Adabas installed.  Within a year
most sites were operational.  This was done by a team of four at the central
office and a Vax system operator at each site.  By use of the Vax network
the system was maintained by the central office site.  By now many other syste
have been installed, including a distributed database system.  I have been
retired for over two years.  I will try to respond to questions.
   By now, the Natural language and Adabas database systems should be very
portable between systems.  They were very close before I left.  It was an
ideal arrangement, in that the high tech staff, stayed at the central office
maintaining the code, doing the debugging, and installing by the network the
new versions.  The remote site operator only needed to know about daily backup
and starting-stopping the database.

Hello,
Would somebody please help me to find out
about the current status of Adabas/Natural
database.

Was it adapted to IBM-compatibles?
Is there a place where to get the last info?
Is it used on Vax/Dec/Sun workstations?
May be "ftp" places for this information..

Thank you very much.

   When I left the Department of Transportation two years ago,  Software AG
has released Adabas/Natural for PC's running under OS/2.  It required a lot
of memory and disk space on PC's.  At the time, it was only available to
installations that had installed the mainframe versions.  The reasoning was
that there is a large education involved in using Adabas/Natural and also
they did not want to be involved in the installation and maintainance of
databases by any ordinary user.  
  Adabas/Natural databases are more involved than an PC type database (Dbase,
Foxbase, Clipper, etc.)  Someone doing Mainframe programming and database
utility work would be able to use their PC version with little trouble, but
for a new user it is a tremendous effort.
  Adabas/Natural was available for DEC/Vax equipment which we used two years
ago.  At the time the coding was in the basic machine language but was being
recoded in C for the Unix environment.  I have been out of touch since then.
To find the current status,  Software AG has USA offices in Reston, Va. I
don;t know the mailing address, but will try to find it if needed.

Software AG is finishing up their final beta release of Natural for Windows.  We
have been beta testing for about a year.  It is an acceptable product, but
definitely not earth-shattering.  It requires (and Software AG recommends)
a 25 MHz 486 with 8Mb of memory running Windows 3.1.  Believe me, you probably
don't want to run with less (I've tried).

They are also working on a GUI version for OS/2.  It should be out soon.

Adabas is only available for OS/2 servers, which really isn't a problem.  I
wouldn't want to run a multiuser server under Windows.  Software AG doesn't
plan on coming out with Adabas for Windows (maybe for NT).

As for talking from Natural/Windows to some Adabas database, you need Software
AG's Net-Work software, also still beta testing for the Windows platform
(pretty stable).

As for VAX, Sun, RS/6000, HP, MVS, CMS, VM, VSE, etc. versions, Adabas and
Natural are available (I have personnaly only used them on VAXes and MVS
machines).

-Michael Niehaus

Egor Alexeev said in article #5681 of comp.databases:

Quote:

> Hello,
> Would somebody please help me to find out
> about the current status of Adabas/Natural
> database.

> Was it adapted to IBM-compatibles?

Both Adabas and Natural are available for PC-style systems running SCO UNIX.
The range of machines covers from small 386/486 systems up to large multi-
processor 486 and Pentium based systems.

--
The opinions expressed above are those of the author's cat, probably not
those of the author, and almost certainly NOT those of SCO Ltd. Miaouw.