Sybase SQLAnywhere - Getting a hard look

[Tony_Adrian]

On the email list I asked opinions regarding Sybase SQL Anywhere. Jan was kind enough to answer & suggested Oracle9i. After looking at our future needs I determined that SQLAnywhere will be more appropriate as we will most likely go to embedded devises in the future and the synchronization is built in at $100.00 per seat. The Oracle synchronization is $800.00 per seat. Sybase also pride themselves on Java integration.

That said - I contacted Sybase & they sent a free evaluation copy with no time limit as well as free hard copy documentation. My sales guy is named Jason Gorringe and his eMail is jgorring@sybase.com .

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[bcusick]

EXCELLENT research, Tony!

Thanks for sharing this with the group!

Bob

[Tony_Adrian]

There are various price structures for purchasing the SQL Anywhere backend depending on the number of features.

Client Purchase - Price is 1 Server and 5 seats for about $500.00. (Call this 6 installs).

OEM - Bundle it into your solution. Cost is based on a projected quantity of installs with a two year contract. You must report the number of installs distributed quarterly. If you sell more than your contracted installs each extra install is at the contracted price. If you don't sell all of your contracted installs in the two years then they extend the contract at the same price. If Sybase comes out with a new version (V8 to V9) the price for upgrade is 25% of the contracted price per upgrade install. An "install" is any type of install - a client, a server, a CE device ... As I understand it Sybase requires one to purchase an initial 1 year support contract that is for 24/7 telephone technical support. After the first year you don't need to renew. The reponse time is typically 30 minutes but they promise 4 hours. The support contract is pretty steep at $4,000.00.

The SQL Anywhere product has two way, row level replication/synchronization. The end user only receives the data that he or she is entitled to. This can occur via TCP or via an eMail scheme. The iAnywhere Studio version I received has a data modeling application built that starts by creating a CDM (Conceptual Data Model). In the CDM you create column names, relationships, keys, ... After you have completed this you create a Physical Data Model (PDM) whereby the tables are created with the desired column types, restraints, etc... The tables can contain triggers and stored procedures. The SQL Anywhere product is supposed to be able to replicate with almost any other backend such as MS SQL, Oracle, ... It also has built in encryption of both the tables and a sort of VPN. I think the VPN encryption as well as the CE install raise the price of the OEM contract agreement.

If I find out anything else I'll post it here.

[Tony_Adrian]

I forgot to post the SQL Anywhere estimated OEM prices:

150 Installs = $80.00/install
600 Installs = $66.00/install

The one year technical support contract is not included ($4,000.00).

[Tony_Adrian]

In Sybase SQL Anywhere there are two tools for "connecting" to the database for the purposes of creating and manipulating databases, tables, properties, data, etc... The first is called Sybase Central - a GUI type Java tool. The second tool is called Interactive SQL. It is a little more command line however it does have a real cool import-export utility.

One of the import features in Interactive SQL is the ability to select the data types to import. Among the many data types is DBF. I see two immediette benefits for this utility:
(1) We can export Filemaker data as DBF and then use the tool for very fast bulk loading of data into Sybase tables for purposes of transitioning & testing.
(2) For the purpose of creating tables we can create a Sybase table with no columns defined, then create the column names on initial import from the DBF. It will also allow us to bulk load data from actual locations. Very nice.

Also - there is a new version of SQL Anywhere coming out in August - Version 9.