I work with a Pick derivative every day. UniData still runs many higher ed ERP systems. (As it does at our institution, which was the first installation of our

I work with a Pick derivative every day. UniData still runs many higher ed ERP systems. (As it does at our institution, which was the first installation of our particular product.) I sometimes joke that we were running a NoSQL DB before SQL existed! ;) I can't comment directly on Pick, but UniData is an... interesting DB. The concept of MultiValue fields is both powerful and horrifying (reporting is a nightmare for anything designed to deal with SQL DBs). The configuration varies between installs, but for the most part all data is treated as ASCII text. Numeric values are converted at runtime. Dates are stored as number of days since December 31st, 1967. (You read that right.) There are no real checks on field length or content. Also, for the most part we program in a basic variant (UniBasic) where the only dynamic programming feature is "dynamic arrays" which are strings with special delimiter characters. "Structured programming" is still mentioned as a novel concept in the manuals. However, there is a vendor "augmented" version of UniBasic that interfaces with our software product's frontend in various ways. It's a niche ecosystem. My manager still remembers the good old days back in the '80s when our ERP system ran on a Prime minicomputer. I still have some manuals sitting around my office with "Prime" printed on the spine...