Re: [HACKERS] SAP Application deployment on PostgreSQL

On 8 September 2017 at 15:34, chiru r <chirupg(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> We have multiple SAP applications running on Oracle as backend and looking
> for an opportunity to migrate from Oracle to PostgreSQL. Has anyone ever
> deployed SAP on PostgreSQL community edition?
>
> Is PostgreSQL community involved in any future road-map of SAP application
> deployment on PostgreSQL?
>
> Thanks
> chiru

This has been asked about on SAP's forum, and that's the most appropriate
place, in that their applications are very much database-specific.

https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/1941255

I imagine that it would be a "broadly interesting" idea to run R/3
against PostgreSQL,
but, as observed in the discussion thread, the "SAP kernel" is very much NOT
database-agnostic. The work that would need to be done to do so would require
considerable work on the part of SAP AG, and I'd be somewhat surprised to see
them do it.

Recall that once upon a time, SAP AG acquired the sources for ADABAS-D,
renamed it SAP-DB, and, for a while, made it available as "open source." At
the time, it appeared that this was some sort of corporate gamesmanship
relating to a vendor selling what one might call "Product O".

SAP AG presumably spent a fair bit of effort (and money) establishing that
port for some of their products. (I imagine that a port to run R/3 on
PostgreSQL
might be easier/simpler than running it on SAP-DB, but that's just me
imagining...) They subsequently drew the code back to be proprietary, and
have released several versions of MaxDB since.

I'd be curious as to reasons to expect that SAP AG would want to do a PostgreSQL
port. (No doubt other ex-BASIS consultants would also be interested!)
--
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"