PrimeBase
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PrimeBase is a SQL database server developed and maintained by SNAP Innovation GmbH of Hamburg, Germany. PrimeBase runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X platforms. Although PrimeBase is a general purpose DBMS, the bulk of the PrimeBase users are in the print and pre-press industry. This is due to historical reasons and the fact that the PrimeBase features such as efficient BLOB handling and full-text search focus on the requirements of applications in this area.
PrimeBase began life as P.INK SQL in 1990. It was originally developed for the Macintosh by the company P.INK Software Engineering GmbH and Co, in Hamburg. At the time, it was the only SQL server that ran on the Macintosh. In 1992 P.INK Software began porting the database to Unix. In particular, the Sun SPARC workstation and the IBM RS/6000.
The database was used as the central component of the P.INK Press Publishing System, which was installed at a number of major newspapers in Germany and world-wide. Following a number of management errors that saw the company grow too fast P.INK Software declared bankruptcy in 1995 when shareholders were unable to agree on the terms for refinancing the company.
A number of former employees managed to secure the rights to the P.INK SQL database and in 1996 they founded SNAP Innovation GmbH. Support and development of the database was continued under the name of PrimeBase. Today PrimeBase is a family of products consisting of the PrimeBase SQL Database Server, the PrimeBase Replication Server and the PrimeBase Application Server.
Primebase is also known for the "Primebase XT Storage Engine for MySQL". PrimeBase XT is released under a GPL license. Primebase has also released a "Scalable BLOB Streaming Infrastructure for MySQL".
