The history of SAP DB goes back to the early 1980s when it was developed as a commercial product (Adabas). The database has changed names several times since then. When SAP AG, a company based in Walldorf, Germany, took over the development of that database system, it was called SAP DB.

SAP developed that database system to serve as a storage system for all heavy-duty SAP applications, namely R/3. SAP DB was meant to provide an alternative to third-party database systems such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and DB2 by IBM. In October 2000, SAP AG released SAP DB under the GNU GPL license (see Appendix G, GNU General Public License), thus making it open source software. In October 2003, more than 2,000 customers of SAP AG were using SAP DB as their main database system, and more than another 2,000 customers were using it as a separate database system besides their main database, as part of the APO/LiveCache solution.

In May 2003, a technology partnership was formed between MySQL AB and SAP AG. That partnership entitles MySQL AB to further develop SAP DB, rename it, and sell commercial licenses of the renamed SAP DB to customers who do not want to be bound to the restrictions imposed on them when using that database system under the GNU GPL (see Appendix G, GNU General Public License). In August 2003, SAP DB was renamed MaxDB by MySQL AB.