Regarding the mainframe I spoke about in the previous post…to continue walking down memory lane. I will mention in retrospect…as a programmer, I wish we had chose IBMs DB2 instead of Software AGs ADABAS as our database. TBH, I wasn’t involved in the decision and probably didn’t even have an opinion about it at the time. I don’t even know if DB2 was considered. I can only guess that the people at IBM, probably pushed it. I’m not saying ADABAS was a bad choice, Only speaking my personal opinion…in hindsight!
ADABAS used the proprietary Natural Language used to create 3270 terminal access to the database. Being more hands on I’d have preferred getting my hands dirty using DB2 in COBOL or Assembler with CICS for online stuff. DB2 used the more industry standard SQL. However I was primarily a Systems Programmer back then, so I wasn’t really coding much then anyways. And I will say the company trained and hired people who wrote some nice looking Natural programs. I myself don’t claim to be a good Natural programmer. I eventually also became the ADABAS DBA. The company treated me very good and gave me lots of training.