

SAP to Buy Sybase for $5.25 Billion - mikek
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/sybase-surges-on-report-of-possible-sap-bid/

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omnipath
Perhaps this is the proper forum to ask this question: I simply don't
understand what SAP is form? Isn't it just a bunch of forms sitting on top a
database? How is it different from Oracle services?

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dhoe
From a modern point of view, SAP's architecture feels pretty alien. In a way
you're right, and it's a massive amount of forms on top of a database, plus
staggering amounts of business logic. But as it was born before the web, it
does not render to HTML, but to it's own display system. Most parts are
written in ABAP, an interpreted language, and the source code is stored in the
database. A quite usable IDE and a debugger are included. The source code is
there, so you can read it and explore how things happen.

There's a database abstraction layer, which works around some limitations of
the underlying databases. What SAP sees as a table might be a set of tables in
the database.

It's not an unpleasant system to work with.

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omnipath
I'll have to take your word for it, as there doesn't seem to be a way to take
a casual look around the product. But thank you for explaining it to me.

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dailo10
$5.25 Billion! Wow. Who uses Sybase??

I feel out of touch. The only enterprise DBs I run into these days are Oracle
and MSSQL.

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manvsmachine
Sybase isn't really in the enterprise DB space anymore. That part of the
business still exists, but it's not really what they push, as far as I've been
told. These days, they primarily do client-server middleware for mobile
devices. Device tracking, remote wiping / encryption, that kind of stuff.

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jhammerb
Not true at all. They do have other lines of business, but their databases
business continues to grow. See
[http://seekingalpha.com/article/185179-sybase-
inc-q4-2009-ea...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/185179-sybase-
inc-q4-2009-earnings-call-transcript), e.g.

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fretlessjazz
My company still uses Sybase. Wish we didn't, but our stored procs are so
complex that switching vendors would be very expensive.

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Devilboy
It used to be true that Sybase stored procs can by converted to MS-SQL with
not much effort, but I guess over the years they've drifted apart quite a bit?

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imack
This makes sense given that MySQL is a property of Oracle now. SAP likely
wants their own database in order to not be dependent.

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lenni
Does SAP run on MySQL? I never used SAP but it seems 'enterprisey' enough to
demand some pretty special DB.

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SilianRail
Basically 90% of their customers are on Oracle, DB2, and MS SQL. Apparently
they tried something with MySQL (<http://www.sap.com/press.epx?pressid=2208>)
but never went anywhere.

