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Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12

Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5 is a database server that supports cross-platform capabilities, Java, and high availability features. It costs $3,995 per server. Though its administration tools are not as easy to use as competitors, they are powerful and extensible. Sybase ASE also includes an application server, providing good value. It performed more slowly than other databases in tests. Basic tasks like database configuration are straightforward in Sybase ASE. It supports connecting to different data sources and replicating data between databases.

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66 views

Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12

Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5 is a database server that supports cross-platform capabilities, Java, and high availability features. It costs $3,995 per server. Though its administration tools are not as easy to use as competitors, they are powerful and extensible. Sybase ASE also includes an application server, providing good value. It performed more slowly than other databases in tests. Basic tasks like database configuration are straightforward in Sybase ASE. It supports connecting to different data sources and replicating data between databases.

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CxH
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.

5
REVIEW DATE: 03.26.02

Product: Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5


Price: $3,995 per server
Company Info: Sybase Inc., 800-879-2273, www.sybase.com

$3,995.00

With cross-platform capabilities, Java support, and high-availability features, Sybase Adaptive
Server Enterprise (ASE) 12.5 is a respectable database server. Though its administration tools
are not as organized or accessible as some of its competitors', they get the job done with
considerable power and extensibility when you know where to look. And considering that Sybase
throws in a J2EE app server, Sybase ASE is a real bargain. It's also a standard in the financial
community, but it performed more slowly on our test than most other products in our roundup.
Installing Sybase wasn't difficult, but we couldn't get the JISQL interactive SQL utility to work
without manually tweaking configuration files, even after six attempts. We also found the textbased installation instructions in the electronic manuals clumsy. (A standard Windows setup
program would help.) The DynaText viewer, however, competently displays PDF and SGML help.
A handy configuration utility gets you started with different server types, including standalone and
backup servers. As with Oracle9i, Sybase ASE offers utilities that tune data-source and network
configurations for connecting to disparate servers.
The Java-based Sybase Central console is the main administrative tool. More spartan than
Oracle's or Microsoft's, it's still a very useful graphical console for basic and advanced
administrative tasks. We used it to set up two dozen model users with different database access
rights. Its support for Unicode is valuable for international work. Another winning feature in
Sybase ASE is its ability to lock down individual rows in addition to setting permissions by column
and table.
We used the JISQL utility to import data, though it proved a somewhat frustrating experience.
(This utility burped on larger SQL scripts and opened a lot of needless error screens in the
process.) The separate text-based ISQL utility successfully imported our large data sets.
Basic performance statistics are available through the main Sybase Central utility. For more
advanced profiling, the Sybase Monitor Server runs alongside your database. We didn't get as
much profiling detail as we did with Oracle and Microsoft without extra work. Extensive online
documents walk you through the process of spotting and solving bottlenecks, but tuning is in no
way an automated process. Using Sybase Central, you can perform basic tasks such as setting
caches and monitoring processes, transactions, and locks.
Sybase ASE's ability to link to different types of data across the enterprise through Component
Integration Services (CIS) is excellent. Similar to Microsoft Universal Data Access, it can connect
to different kinds of data and treat them relationally, even though they're not within Sybase ASE.
Using CIS, we configured our test database to query an Oracle database. The optional External

File System lets you connect to spreadsheet data and other file types. Another option called SQL
Remote lets you replicate data between sources. We used this successfully with both online and
offline order databases.
Setting up multiple nodes for high availability with either symmetric or asymmetric configurations
in Sybase ASE is straightforward. In symmetric mode running under Windows (where two servers
work together to assure availability), you rely on the Microsoft Cluster Services, just as in SQL
Server.
Java is an integral part of Sybase ASE, beginning with its SQLJ support for writing stored
procedures and database objects that offer a way to encode your business logic. In our testing,
we created a business object for processing orders using Java and Sybase Central. We also
created stored procedures with Transact-SQL, the dialect of SQL used by Sybase. Unfortunately,
integrated help for Transact-SQL isn't available from the Java Central console.
Further Java support comes from its JDBC-compliant driver, jConnect, which lets you connect to
databases via Java. We used this for performance testing but at one point, it crashed our BEA
app server.
A definite plus in Sybase ASE is its included support for Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs). Borrowing
technology from Sybase's EAServer, a J2EE-compliant app server, Sybase ASE lets you model
business components in EJBs. You control and administer this server in the same Java Central
console.
Although Sybase has made no formal announcement, the company expects to add support for
Web services as EAServer gets these capabilities. A separate Java/XML option lets you import
and export data as XML with DTD validation and XPath support.
The administrative tools aren't nearly as slick as those of its competitors, and performance lagged
behind that of other databases, but Sybase ASE delivers the goods, with a reliable database
platform and leading-edge support for Java. It also runs on a wide range of OSs. Priced to move,
Sybase ASE deserves a close look from any organization, especially those with heterogeneous
servers and in-house Java developers.

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