Adabas is one of the fastest databases in the world. Its high speed and legendary reliability make Adabas the ideal database server for large and mission-critical business applications that require sub-second response times for thousands of users even in peak times.

DB2 is IBM's offering to the highend database market. The latest version of DB2 (Universal Database) is ideal for OLTP, Data Warehousing, Decision Support and everything in between. It's well priced, extremely scalable and runs on virtually every platform out there from handhelds to mainframes.

IBM Informix® Dynamic Server (IDS) is a general-purpose database supported on a large range of platforms including AIX, Linux, Windows and Solaris. As well as being ideal for Online Transaction Processing, IDS also supports IBM Informix DataBlade modules to handle spatial, geodetic and time series data.

SQL Server is Microsoft's entry to the database server market. SQL Server is very easy to manage and comes with a built in OLAP engine. It has good support for web enabled applications and other Microsft products. SQL Server only runs on the Windows platform.

MySQL is the cross-platform open source database server software used extensively in web development and implementaion. It lacks many advanced features that are taken for granted in the enterprise systems, but these shortcomings are offset by ease of use and impressive speed.

Oracle is probably the most popular enterprise database server at the moment. This is the server that powers eBay on the web and countless datawarehouses and VLDBs around the world. Oracle is suited for all applications from OLTP to Data Warehousing. The latest 9i even has a built in OLAP engine.

Pervasive.SQL is the latest offering from the company that originally produced Btrieve®. Pervasive.SQL comes with many advanced features and has excellent support for a multitude of client technologies. It is supported on Windows, Linux and is ideal for web enabled applications.

PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) based on POSTGRES It provides SQL92/SQL99 language support and other modern features. It is the most advanced open-source database available anywhere.

Sybase is a powerful all-round database server designed to support the demanding requirements of Internet and traditional, mission-critical OLTP and DSS applications. Sybase is well priced and there is even a free version for Linux that can be used in a production environment. Also included in the product line-up is ASA, the mobile and embedded market leader, and IQ, the data warehousing solution.

There are many other database systems out there such as mSQL, Progress and Ingres. There are also many OLAP systems which are becoming more popular as the hardware required to run them gets cheaper. One of the more popular OLAP systems is Essbase.

Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side scripting environment that you can use to create and run dynamic, interactive Web server applications. As with Perl and PHP, ASP has database conectivity components for most databases.

Macromedia ColdFusion is an application server and development environment allowing easy creation of powerful dynamic web applications using reusable components (CFML).

A world standard for high performance reporting, Crystal Reports is an intuitive reporting toolkit that helps you rapidly create flexible, feature-rich reports and tightly integrate them into web and windows applications.

Database connectivity via ODBC or native libraries using third party applications and languages.

Native java stored procedures are now supported in Oracle, DB2 and Sybase. Far more flexible than SQL for many tasks, it is quickly becoming the language of choice for DBA's and developers.

Microsoft.NET initiative is a business strategy focusing on providing software as a service hosted on the Internet. For developers, .NET brings with it an entirely new framework, along with new languages and programming tools.

Perl has long been the language of choice for many experienced database administrators. The DBI is an abstraction layer that allows Perl to connect to virtually any database given the correct module.

Although not strictly a DML or batch language is one of the most widely used data access software for web implementations. PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language with native support for many of the popular databases.

The Standard Query Language for virtually all relational database systems currently in use. Although most vendors slightly enhance their versions to take advantage of features specific to their own software.

The database administrator's other best friend! Shell scripts can be used for many of the mundane tasks involving databases including backup automation and batch job control.

Database connectivity via ODBC or native libraries using third party applications and languages.

XML is fast becoming the standard for web-based information exchange. For XML documents to be displayed on a web browser, they must be "transformed" -- into XSL documents on the client side, or HTML documents on the server side. XSLT is a lightweight language designed specifically for this purpose.

The desktop database that comes with Corel's WordPerfect Office suite.

A powerfull and flexible database management system for intranet/internet publishing. There is also a server version and a palm version of FileMaker

The database that comes with Office Professional. Access can handle tens of thousands of rows with ease and has great connectivity support for traditional database servers.

Excel is part of Microsoft's Office suite and interfaces with any ODBC compliant database. With the included VBA language, it's possible to build an entire database frontend using Excel. This is already true with Essbase, a leading OLAP database.

There a lot of desktop databases in use, some of which are no longer developed and some just being released. Discuss them in here!

If you are new to the forums, feel free to start here with an introduction. Not sure where to post? Ask here and avoid the flames.

In addition to the vendor specific tools, there are a plethora of third party applications and tools for data manipulation, design and administration. Discuss them in here.

Discuss the design of your OLTP, OLAP, DSS or data warehouse... Ponder over the two phase commit and argue about third normal form.

The obligatory chat forum. This is where you can talk about anything and anyone at anytime to anyone and everyone!

If you want to advertise products or services, this is the ONLY acceptable forum to use. Alternatively, contact us for some great prices on banner placements.

Are you seeking a DB guru? If so, post it here!

If you have any suggestions regarding the site such as requests for new forums or sub-forums, make it known in here.