| Developer(s) | Sybase - An SAP Company |
|---|---|
| Initial release | May 23, 1980 |
| Written in | C, C++ |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Available in | English |
| Type | RDBMS |
| License | Proprietary EULA |
| Website | ASE |
Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) is Sybase Corporation's (Now SAP AG) flagship enterprise-class relational model database server product. ASE is predominantly used on the Unix platform but is also available for Windows.
Contents |
Originally for UNIX platforms in 1987, Sybase Corporation's primary relational database management system product was initially marketed under the name Sybase SQL Server. In 1988, SQL Server for OS/2 was co-developed for the PC by Sybase, Microsoft, and Ashton-Tate. Ashton-Tate divested its interest and Microsoft became the lead partner after porting SQL Server to Windows NT.
Microsoft and Sybase sold and supported the product through version 4.21. In 1993 the co-development licensing agreement between Microsoft and Sybase ended and the companies parted ways while continuing to develop their respective versions of the software.
In 1995, Sybase released SQL Server 11.0. Starting with version 11.5, released in 1996, Sybase moved to differentiate its product from Microsoft SQL Server by renaming it to Adaptive Server Enterprise.
Sybase provides native low-level programming interfaces to its database server which uses a protocol called Tabular Data Stream. Prior to version 10, DBLIB (DataBase LIBrary) was used. Version 10 and onwards uses, CTLIB (Client LIBrary).
In 1998, ASE 11.9.2 was rolled out with support for row-level locking and distributed joins and improved SMP performance. ASE 12.0 was released in 1999 providing support for Java, high availability and distributed transaction management. In 2001, ASE 12.5 was released providing features such as dynamic memory allocation and support for XML and SSL among others. Support of an EJB container within the database server along with efficient in-memory connections to the database engine, suggests an object oriented access to the relational data.
In September 2005, Sybase released ASE 15. It includes a rewritten query optimizer that is supposed to increase performance over the traditional optimizer, and support for partitioning table rows in a database across individual disk devices to reduce contention and increase the speed at which the data can be accessed, and "virtual columns" which are computed only when required. Other changes that didn't make it to the initial release but are expected soon are support for column-level encryption, and the ability to mount a database dump as a "virtual database" and extract only the information required.
Sybase ASE 15.0 also has many new configuration parameters included in its latest release. Many parameters that were static (which required server reboot for the changes to take place) have been made dynamic (Changes will take effect immediately) ensuring better performance of the adaptive server with comparably less down time. For example, In the earlier versions of Sybase ASE prior to 15, "tape retension in days" parameter was static which always caused a problem whenever there is a plan to change the number of days which the backup has to be kept in the tape media without overwriting the existing contents in the production environment has now been made dynamic in the latest release. See the online documentation for more details.
The version number was bumped to 15 from 12 because 13 is considered unlucky in Europe, the United States and other "Western" countries, and 14 is considered unlucky in China.
An ASE installation typically comprises one "dataserver" which hosts several databases. Some of these are "system" databases which store only meta-data used to keep the system operational. The others are "user" databases which store application data in the form of tables and stored procedures. Users can access the data using a login and password. Once logged into a Sybase dataserver a user's access to databases and tables etc. is controlled by setting permissions.
Sybase also have a Developer edition that can be used for free to develop against (but not for production use). http://www.sybase.com/ase_1500devel
It only allows 1 engine and 25 connections. http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.sybase.help.ase_15.0.asewqig/html/asewqig/asewqig3.htm