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.

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.