Sybase ADDICT

Sybase ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise) can now be installed easily on Linux distribution running kernel 2.6.x.

So i tried to install ASE 15.0.3 ESD1 on my favorite Linux: Slackware 12.2. Why Slackware ? Because it rocks !! In my opinion, the best Linux distribution ever, and 64 bits release came out recently.

But this come with a little issue… Sybase ASE need PAM to be installed.

Otherwise it will not start. And guess what ? Slackware does not come with PAM. Well, the truth is you don’t really need the all PAM package to start ASE, you just really need the PAM libraries.

Install PAM libraries is easy:
- just download the PAM library sources at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/library/
- unzip and untar the file

and start compilation:

./configure
make
make install


Now you can start ASE on Slackware Linux ! You know what ? I’m happy now

Quickly find out the database’s tables having identity columns:

1> select object_name(id) as "tablename",name as "column_name"
2> from syscolumns where status =128
3> go

Enjoy

Did you ever think about an integration between Sybase ASE and “Tivoli Storage Manager” (TSM) provided by IBM ?

As far as I knew, IBM did not offer such kind of tool to interface Sybase ASE and TSM and, as far as I knew, no such kind of interface exist from any other vendor.  Sure, you can still buy “SQL Backtrack” that provides direct backup to TSM through their OBSI… But from my point of view SQL Backtrack becomes obsolete regarding the new backup capabilities of Sybase ASE. So it is an expensive solution to buy SQL Backtrack just to link directly ASE with TSM to perform backups… What a pity, it could sometimes make the DBA’s life easier to backup databases directly to TSM…

But the good news is such kind of product finally exists and is named “Data Protector” !!

Data Protector will allow you to backup your Sybase ASE databases using TSM. Data Protector is a command line driven backup and restoration tool.

Unfortunately I can’t test it in the environment I’m currently working in (TSM administrators do not allow me to test it). But I think it deserves a look. Repostor is the company providing this product. You can visit their company website here: http://www.repostor.com/joomla.

Features available in this product are:

• Full backup of all databases
• Full backup of selected database(s)
• Full restore of all databases
• Full restore of selected database(s)
• Restore of database to a new machine
• Restore of database to a new database / instance
• Query to TSM. What backup versions do I have?
• Pick older version of backup for restoration

They even provide a video to install an use the product, you can see it below:

Sybase regularly provides podcasts or webcasts about their products.

Here is a bunch of podcasts about ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise) targeting various “perfomance & tuning” topics. Enjoy

+ General Best Practices

Tune in with Sybase ASE experts and special guest Peter Thawley, senior director and architect for Sybase engineering, to explore the best practices in performance and tuning for database applications based on Adaptive Server Enterprise.

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+ Monitoring Practices and Tools

In this Podcast, Stefan Karlsson and guest Jeff Tallman discuss the details of monitoring within the ASE environment.

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+ Tips & Tricks

ASE experts Stefan Karlsson, Jeff Tallman, Rob Verschoor and Steve Bologna share their tips and tricks for improving database performance.

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+ System Tuning “CPU interaction”

David Wein and Stefan Karlsson discuss ASE’s kernel and how ASE interacts with the OS in the first of this 3-part discussion on system tuning.

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+ System Tuning “Task management”

Sybase drill down into ASE task management in the second of this 3-part series on system tuning.

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+ System Tuning “Monitoring & Configuration”

In the last of this 3-part discussion on system tuning Sybase tackles monitoring and configuration.

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+ System Tuning “Spinlocks”

Stefan Karlsson discusses spinlocks, what they are and how to monitor and tune.

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Find out the dataserver’s page size without using global variables like @@pagesize or @@maxpagesize.

When you work with heterogeneous versions of Sybase Ase (12.0.x and 12.5.x or 15.x), this query can help you while coding your dba stored procedures…

1> declare @page_size int
2> select @page_size = low /1024 from master.dbo.spt_values
3> where type = 'E' and number = 1
4> go

It will produce the result in Kb. This works with Sybase ASE from version 11.x to 15.x.