How do I start learning Natural & Adabas at home?

I am new to Natural and Adabas. I don’t have any knowledge. I want to learn these technologies to become a developer in my workplace. How do I start learning at home.

From the forum, click on the “Try Free” button (top right), select “Adabas & Natural” section and download the free Adabas & Natural with NaturalONE Docker environment.

Then go to the SECTIONS > Videos, select Tag “Natural” and scroll down to the “Developing your first Natural Application” tutorial. Once done that, explore the other videos!

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Hello Jon,

You may also use our free training for Adabas and Natural : Catalogue (softwareag.com)

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The download is disabled. I was an aged programmer using Natural Adabas between 1983 and 1991. I developed many great systems using Nat/Adabas for companies such as Cathay Pacific, BP NZ, Woolworths NZ. Since I handed off, I wanted to use natural as a free programming language such as basic, C, java and their like. However, for over 20 years, I had never been able to download even a workable trial version. They were either full of bugs or difficult to use. I am now retired and I come to SAG website and see if there is anything good. No improvement for over 30 years.

Hello,

Due to the global log4j Vulnerability the download of the Community Edition is temporary disabled.
Additional information could be found here:
https://empower.softwareag.com/announcements/default.aspx

Once it will be available we will announce it on the Tech Community.

Eli

Too bad you didn’t join this Forum back then. We would have helped you work through the issues.

As you were a mainframe Natural developer, I don’t think you will find much joy with the latest Natural free trial.

Until recently, the free trial versions installed Natural for Windows. This presented a substantial learning curve for a mainframe Natural developer. Beyond the Windows installation, there was the paradigm shift from character-based to GUI system, but the Natural Studio IDE offered a fairly straightforward translation from Natural commands/functions to menu bars and task bar icons, and the optional command line made it possible to get real work done without immediately learning all of the new features and capabilities.

Recently, SAG appears to have changed its target audience from mainframe Natural developer to server Java developer. The latest trial is packaged with Docker. Without prior Docker experience, it’s easy to stumble and get lost in the installation instructions. Once installed, you have to learn Eclipse, as the IDE is Natural ONE, an Eclipse plug-in. Unlike Natural Studio, Natural ONE was not intended to mimic a mainframe Natural development environment.

Hi Ralph,

Happy new year to you.

Thanks for your email.

Yes. I was a mainframe Natural Adabas/DB2 developer. My last use of NAT/Adb was in 1996 when I delivered an extension of the British Petroleum NZ Ltd’s Bulk products moment system in 3 months after 4 years away from NZ. The BPNZ’s Bulk products moment system was built by me in 1991. (nobody was able to complete that extension between Apr 1991 and Nov 1995 until my return)

I got back to SAG natural (site) is because it reminds my glory days (my NZ clients described me as one of the best Natural support persons in the Southern Hemisphere). If there is a free natural adabas version, then I am much like to use it to develop simple applications.

I was also interested to know how Natural’s evolved in this modern era. I used Cobol, Visual Basic, Java after all Natural Adabas shops were closed in NZ and Australia. I use visual studio, Atom, Intellij IDEA as IDE and I have Docker on my PC. I don’t think either Natural One or Natural studio is a problem to me. Anyway, I don’t use Natural for living. If it is not available, it does not make my life hard either. If Natural Studio is to mimic Mainframe, I wonder is there any free version available. I will no be disappointed if the answer is negative as SAG has disappointed Natural Adabas developers since the dawn of client server computing in the 90s. Cobol programmers could live on Cobol for over 50 years, but not SAG Natural though Natural is superior to Cobol!

Best regards,

WT Sit

p.s: attached is a simple java program I did couple of days ago for lotto random numbers picking for a given input set of numbers. I wonder if Natural could be used for less codes than java nowadays.

mark6.txt (1.81 KB)

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