SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE), legacy vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

High-performance, high-concurrency transactions are well suited for ASE. ASE is lacking some features in my opinion such as history tables, however there are ways to implement them via workarounds or by using Replication Server. I do think the way the ASE parser and optimizer works are far superior to other products as it is a true cost-based optimizer and the order of the tables in the FROM clause does not really matter although a good SQL coder will place the tables in a meaningful order to make the SQL more readable. ASE is good for applications that require high availability and can be used for mission critical systems.

Incentivized

SAP SQL Anywhere is better than not using a database, let's be clear there! However, I wouldn't pick it as my first or even second or third choice. I'd recommend looking at other options. Largely, it appears less powerful both in terms of its robustness and general performance and in its implementation of SQL. The standard Sybase utilities provided are lacking in basic features, and the interactive SQL utility is quite horrendous. However, the great thing is it is an ODBC-compliant SQL-compliant relational database.

Incentivized

• Easy to setup and maintain
• Reliable, rarely has major hiccups requiring reboots or crashes
• Very responsive with complicated queries spanning various tablespaces and hundreds of millions of rows

Incentivized

• Good performance with relatively large data sets - its cost-based query optimizer is particularly robust
• ANSI SQL compliant
• Supports T-SQL
• Scales well between the desktop (single user) and client/server installations supporting 50-1000 users

• Full database encryption - need to utilize external keys vs internal - for better separation of duties.
• History Tables.

Incentivized

• I think it should be more user friendly for non-technical users.
• More functional functionalities should be added to the object explore when working with a table to transform data/manipulate data.

Incentivized

Our licenses are perpetual. It is the support that we will be renewing. We will renew because we continue to use and receive value from the product.

Incentivized

Ease of use, relationship to existing software's used in house and familiarity with the product

Incentivized

It does almost everything we need and for the things it doesn't do natively, we are still able to do using other features. For example, natively history tables weren't supported but we were able to create them using triggers.

Incentivized

Incredibly responsive, saving us countless hours in troubleshooting.

Incentivized

Much less effort than Oracle. Much better customer support than Oracle. Roughly equivalent to SQL Server in performance and ease of use. Much better customer service than SQL Server. Different ballpark from IQ. Same customer service.

Incentivized

I worked with Oracle for years during my career. I wouldn't select SQL Anywhere to implement a global ATM system with tens of thousands of concurrent connections, but SQL Anywhere is much easier to use and deploy and works very well in workgroup settings. Query performance often exceeds some Oracle versions without having to rely on database tuning.

• Negative - Costs a lot ... but so do they all.
• Positive - It does what we need it to do.

Incentivized

• Skilled/experienced resources are less prominent than Microsoft SQL Server or even Oracle, or MySQL, so finding solutions and assistance, if needed, takes more time than it would with other platforms
• You will need to find a good SQL query tool by yourself because the Sybase Central / Interactive SQL utilities are lacking in many basic features, and just generally have a bad user interface

Incentivized