Digital Equipment Corp will announce that it is selling its Rdb database business this month, PC Week believes. The news underlines just how desperate the company’s condition is, because it is difficult to see how the business – the company’s own relational database for VAX/VMS users – with OSF/1 Unix and Windows NT versions promised, could be worth more to a third party than it is to DEC. As to a buyer, the first name that as usual springs to mind is Computer Associates International Inc; a development tools vendor that does not have its own database is a possibility.