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- From: dowen@midsomer.org (David Owen)
- Newsgroups: comp.databases.sybase,comp.answers,news.answers
- Subject: Sybase FAQ: 2/19 - ASA
- Reply-To: dowen@midsomer.org (David Owen)
- Followup-To: comp.databases.sybase
- Distribution: world
- Organization: Midsomer Consultants Inc.
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- Keywords: FAQ, DATABASES, SYBASE, ASA, ASE, REP
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- Date: 20 Apr 2004 13:45:01 GMT
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- Archive-name: databases/sybase-faq/part2
- URL: http://www.isug.com/Sybase_FAQ
- Version: 1.7
- Maintainer: David Owen
- Last-modified: 2003/03/02
- Posting-Frequency: posted every 3rd month
- A how-to-find-the-FAQ article is posted on the intervening months.
-
- Sybase Frequently Asked Questions
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-
- Sybase FAQ Home PageAdaptive Server Enterprise FAQAdaptive Server Anywhere FAQ
- Repserver FAQSearch the FAQ
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- Adaptive Server Anywhere
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-
- 0.0 Preamble
- 0.1 What is ASA?
- 0.2 On what platforms is ASA supported?
- 0.3 What applications is ASA good for?
- 0.4 When would I choose ASA over ASE?
- 0.5 Does ASA Support Replication?
- 0.6 What is ASA UltraLite?
- 0.7 Links for further information
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- 0.0 Preamble
-
- I make no claims to be an ASA expert! I am beginning to use it more and more,
- and as I use it I am able to add stuff with more authority to this list. All
- of what is here is very general. I am pressing people to help write some more
- meaty parts. There is nothing here on how to recover from crashes that must
- happen, or equivalent sections for those in the the ASE part. Performance and
- Tuning would be a good section! If anyone out there knows of a good ASA faq,
- then send it to me, and I will get it added. This is a resource that will help
- us all. Come on all you TeamSybase/TeamPowerbuilder people, you must know
- something on the subject <g>. It is unlikely that this is going to grow into a
- particularly useful resource unless I get some serious help!
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- 0.1 What is ASA?
-
- ASA is a fully featured DBMS with transactional integrity, automatic rollback
- and recovery, declarative RI, triggers and stored procedures.
-
- While it comes out of Sybase's "Mobile and Embedded" division, it is NOT
- limited to "small, desktop applications". There are many ASA implementations
- supporting over 100 concurrent users. While not as scalable as ASE, it does
- offer SMP support and versions for various Unix flavors as well as Netware and
- NT/w2k. Multi-gigabyte databases are commonly used.
-
- ASA offers a number of features that are not to be found in ASE:
-
- * row level BEFORE and AFTER triggers
- * long varchar and BLOB up to 2 gigabytes
- * varchar up to 32k
- * declarative RI with cascade actions
- * all character and decimal data is stored var-len, using only the space
- it needs
-
- ASA is designed to be low-maintenance:
-
- * File size automatically grows
- * self-tuning
- * re-uses space from deletes
-
- ASA also includes:
-
- * Java stored procs
- * Stored procedure debugger (I am not sure what sort of debugger, just that
- it has one.)
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- 0.2 On what platforms is ASA supported?
-
- Lots!
-
- * Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, CE
- * Novell NetWare
- * Solaris/SPARC
- * Solaris/Intel
- * IBM AIX
- * Linux (RedHat)
- * HP-UX
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- 0.3 What applications is ASA good for?
-
- ASA seems to have a number of niches. It is generally good at OLTP and can be
- used as a basis for a general database project. There are certainly examples
- of implementations supporting 100 or more users.
-
- A major area for ASA databases is with applications that need to distribute the
- database with the application as a general storage area for internal
- components, but the database is not a major part of the deliverable. Sybase
- themselves have done this with the IQ meta data storage. Prior to release 11
- of IQ, the meta data was stored in an ASE database. Now, with IQ 12, the meta
- data has moved to being stored in ASA. This makes the installation of IQ into
- production environments much simpler.
-
- ASA has excellent ODBC support, which makes it very attractive to tools
- oriented towards ODBC.
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- 0.4 When would I choose ASA over ASE?
-
- * Ease of administration,e.g., self-tuning optimizer, db file is an OS file
- (not partition).
- * Lower footprint - runs on "smaller" machines.
- * Lower cost, ASA is definitely cheaper than ASE on the same platform.
- * Want to use SQL Remote (asynchronous replication)
- * More complete SQL92 implementation.
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- 0.5 Does ASA Support Replication?
-
- In short, yes. ASA comes with SQL Remote, an asynchronous replication server.
- SQL Remote is intended to be used in applications where the replication is
- not intended to happen immediately. In fact, it may well be hours or even days
- before the databases are synchronised. This makes it ideal for the roaming
- salesman type apps where the guy is on the road all day and then dials in from
- home, hotel or beach front to re-synch his pay price list with the master
- server.
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- 0.6 What is ASA UltraLite?
-
- UltraLite is a version of ASA that runs on handheld devices.
-
- Deployment
- Windows 95/98, NT, 2000, CE
- Palm Computing platform
- WindRiver VxWorks
- DOS
- Symbian EPOC
-
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- 0.7 I'm interested, where can I find more info?
-
- Breck Carter has a very useful page at http://www.bcarter.com/home.html that is
- full of detail.
-
- General information can be found about ASA at:
-
- http://www.sybase.com/products/anywhere/sql_productinfo.html
-
- It is a bit of a marketing page but there are some pointers to white papers
- etc.
-
- A very well written reviewers guide can be found at
-
- http://www.sybase.com/products/anywhere/sas_reviewers_guide.html
-
- The page has a link to a pdf document that contains lots of useful information.
-
-