In spite of all these, contrary to many believe, DB2 was not the IDMS 'killer' in the long term. Other players were in the field. Two mini computer databases - Oracle and Ingres - had dvided the VAX-11 market. Cullinet tried to enter this area by acquiring Esvel Inc, an offshoot of System-R research alumnae.They had relational product which was to later become IDMS/VAX. Again, Cullinet did another blunder. This time instead of concentrating on the database, the focus was on Generator, a higher level specification tool which would generate COBOL. The claims were sky high - Generator can make an application in 20 minutes. There was even attempt to given Generator on mainframe. Obviously there is no magic in programming. What VAX/DB lacked was a programmable tool like ADS. Generator failed, and VAX database, though superior to Oracle and Ingres at that time, was unnoticed by the industry. Generator followed the CASE Tools like (IEF, IEW etc) to the wastepaper basket.
1987 Userweek had a blueprint for IDMS release 11.0 with full SQL support. SQL Option was supposed to be based on the SQL Engine of VAX-DB with its optimizer written in C. This was the right direction to go for IDMS. But Cullinet management headed by John Landry & Co had other ideas. They wanted to focus on Expert Systems. IDMS was sidelined and the next Userweek in 1988, there was no talk of Release 11! What a blunder. Many who worked hard to get Release 11 left the firm. VAX Magic did not bring enough revenue. Then John Cullinane came back for a brief period and talked about Enterprise DB for MVS! That is SQL Option was to be a separate database and not part of IDMS! Well, the drama did not go further. In the summer of 1989 Cullinet ran out of money and fallen in the hands of CA. By October 1989 the takeover was complete. CA got a quality database with its 3000 customer base. With Cullinet acquisition, CA crossed the 1 billion dollar mark in revenue.