In computing, Btrieve is a transactional database based on Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM), which is a way of storing data for fast retrieval. There have been several versions of the product for DOS, Linux, older versions of Microsoft Windows, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and for Novell NetWare.
It was originally a record manager that was published by SoftCraft at around the same time as the release of the first IBM PCs. After gaining market share and popularity, it was purchased by Novell for integration into their Netware operating system. The product failed to gain significant market share and, after some reorganization within Novell, the product was spun off to be developed by a new company known as Btrieve Technologies, Inc. (BTI).
Btrieve was modularized starting with version 6.15 and became one of two database backends that plugged into a standard software interface called the Micro-Kernel Database Engine. The other product is Scalable SQL, a relational database product that uses Structured Query Language, otherwise known as SQL. After several new versions were released the company was renamed to Pervasive Software and they now sell the product as Pervasive PSQL.