Great workgroup RDMS at a fair price
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use SQL Anywhere with our GeoGraphix software for oil and gas exploration. It has been a workhorse RDMS for us for almost 25 years. It's fully ANSI SQL compliant, performs well, and handles relatively large data volumes (10,000,000 records per table). It also scales easily from a single consultant's desktop to an oil and gas major or NOC.
Pros
- 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
Cons
- Small user base makes finding information difficult.
- Third-party vendors don't support native connections to SQL Anywhere (TIBCO, ESRI). Although direct ODBC connections can be used successfully.
Likelihood to Recommend
Workhorse RDMS that performs well for workgroup installations (50-100 users). Works equally well in standalone and client/server scenarios.