[gricardo99]

   Get a free version out there that can be used for many things…

I think this has been the biggest impediment to kdb+ gaining recognition as a great technology/product and growing amongst the developer community.

Having used kdb+ extensively in the finance world for years, I became a convert and a fan. There’s an elegance in its design and simplicity that seems very much rooted in the Unix philosophy. After I left finance, and no longer worked at a company that used kdb+, I often felt the urge to reach for kdb+ to use for little projects here and there. It was frustrating that I couldn’t use it anymore, or even just show colleagues this little known/niche tool and geek out a little on how simple and efficient it was for doing certain tasks/computations.

[jcul]

Isn't there a free version or something?

I had to write some C++ code in the past to send data into kdb and also a decoder for their wire protocol. For both I definitely had a kdb binary to test against.

I just needed to test against it. Maybe Kx gave us a development license or something, it was a good few years ago.

[7thaccount]

They do have a free version for non-commercial work.

[shrubble]

Were any of the open source versions such as ngn/k or Kerf etc. usable for you?

[RodgerTheGreat]

Kerf1 has only been open source for a fairly short time, and prior to that it was proprietary. ngn/k is tremendously less feature-rich than Q/k4, has some built-in constraints that make building large programs difficult, and does not come with the "batteries included" necessary for building distributed systems. Neither is currently a credible alternative to kdb+ for production environments.

[thaufeki]

Well you would have to know how to code in k, not just q, the syntax is a lot more terse and there are a lot of features missing