BTrieve is one of the older generic
database systems that is still in wide use today. It gained it's rather large following by becoming integrated with
Novell's server product. Eventually through various sales, mergers, etc it fell into the hands of
Pervasive software who created a new product,
Pervasive SQL, and are trying to move everyone from the older BTrieve to their newer system. You can, however, still buy the
SDK.
BTrieve can be served from a server (such as novell), or can be accessed directly off a disk or shared drive. It is only necessary to load one
TSR into memory, one of which sends requests to a server, the other managing the database itself from
disk files.
It was primarily designed for
DOS applications, and did not come with any sort of
browser or simple database/table manager - everything had to be created with custom programs.