Advantage Devzone down

[former_member951033]

Hello,

Since a few days, I can't access the advantage devzone reference.

I've tried :

https://devzone.advantagedatabase.com

http://devzone.advantagedatabase.com/dz/content.aspx?Key=1

I'm looking specifically for the online help files https://devzone.advantagedatabase.com/dz/webhelp/Advantage11.1/index.html

--> it pushes back to the SAP community hub.

(Found a copy here in the meantime:

http://web.archive.org/web/20210508044345/https://devzone.advantagedatabase.com/dz/webhelp/Advantage...

Can you check if it's me or everyone ?

[tcutlip]

All my former links to ADS Dev zone are doing the same as is the license portal as discussed in another thread.

[mjgould]

SAP..... BRING BACK DEVZONE.

Either put it back up on your servers or make it available to someone who can re-publish this valuable resource.

Many searches for Advantage-related questions lead to DEVZONE answers and direction. Its absence is a great loss to those who continue to use and have investments in the Advantage products.

[dnsdaniel]

I am having the same issue and now the HTTPS version also redirects to community.sap.com. While I have most of the files downloaded already, there is still a wealth of knowledge there that is missing, yes. Really wish they would restore it.

Seems like SAP bought out Sybase just to bury Advantage Database Server and promote their flagship Hanna, instead, I don't know. It's frustrating, either way, because so much technology is still running great on Advantage, especially for Delphi developers. I really hope they put it back or make it accessible from somewhere.

[mjgould]

SAP cares nothing for Advantage. Yes they purchased in order to put it down. Pretty slimy, I think. When someone else has a product of greater value than a product of your own, buy out the competition and shut it down. SAP has nothing to compare to ADS - their best option would have been to back ADS and continue to improve and advance it.

Sad, real sad.

[jhoehne]

SAP didn't purchase ADS, they purchased Sybase. As for the reason, see here

I think as ADS was a very small part of Sybase, SAP didn't even notice. ADS is primarily used with xBase, this is far off what SAP does. Sybase purchased Extended Systems in 2006, but not for ADS. They wanted their development tools for mobile devices. A guess what, SAP wanted Sybase for their development tools for mobile devices. And in both cases alongside came ADS...

[dnsdaniel]

Right, they bought Sybase, they didn't buy it out solely to bury ADS. I think that was a bigger side benefit than given credit for, though. As many Delphi developers will attest, ADS is very widely used in these apps but often under the radar because it was very simple and just worked great, usually in the background. I am always surprised how many applications I find running on it, despite so few having heard of it. Our companies have bought a lot of ADS licenses over the years and SAP has increasingly handed them out with more and more resistance. And as of now, not at all. They will not sell me an ADS license. So, they have definitely chosen to bury ADS at this point, along with its knowledge base and product downloads. We will probably rewrite our application for an open source database, as there are many great ones and we use them for the web. C'est la vie, ADS! We will miss you.

[former_member951033]

tcutlip :

I've annoyingly proceeded as instructed - I don't understand how references and documentation that was published and is now considered to be public now requires a new contract.

Best regards,