SQL on Minicomputers:
Minicomputers were one of the most fertile early markets for SQL-based database
systems. Oracle and Ingres were both originally marketed on Digital's VAX/VMS
minicomputer systems. Both products have since been ported to many other platforms.
Sybase, a later database system specialized for online transaction processing, also
targeted the VAX as one of its primary platforms.
Through the 1980s, the minicomputer vendors also developed their own proprietary
relational databases featuring SQL. Digital considered relational databases so important
that it bundled a run-time version of its Rdb/VMS database with every VAX/VMS system.
Hewlett-Packard offered Allbase, a database that supported both its HPSQL dialect and a
nonrelational interface. Data General's DG/SQL database replaced its older nonrelational
databases as DG's strategic data management tool. In addition, many of the
minicomputer vendors resold relational databases from the independent database
software vendors. These efforts helped to establish SQL as an important technology for
midrange computer systems.
Today, the minicomputer vendors' SQL products have largely disappeared, beaten in the
marketplace by multi-platform software from Oracle, Informix, Sybase, and others.
Accompanying this trend, the importance of proprietary minicomputer operating systems
has faded as well, replaced by widespread use of Unix on midrange systems.
Yesterday's minicomputer SQL market has effectively become today's market for Unixbased
database servers based on SQL.
