Hi everyone in the SAP on Sybase ASE community,
I’m happy to let you know that we just have released SAP Sybase ASE 15.7 ESD#3 (version number 15.7.0.030 in SAP version number scheme) for SAP applications. My recommendation to everyone running SAP applications on Sybase ASE is to plan for a database update during one of the next maintenance windows for your systems. For new installations, I don’t see any reason not to go with ESD#3 right from the start.
Since I have not been describing ESD#2 (15.7.0.021) features here in SCN, I will summarize the new features of ESD#2 and ESD#3 here:
- Fixes: With ESD#3 you get all of the fixes for database issues that have been made available since the initial release of release 15.7.
- In-row LOB compression: ASE can store LOB data in-row or off-row (on special LOB pages). Data compression was introduced with ASE 15.7, but in-row LOBs have not been compressed. With the new version you will get in-row LOB compression. For some SAP tables this can make a big difference. For an example, please have a look at this blog from huseyin.bilgen who shares his experiences.
- Hash-based statistics: This feature helps speed up the updating of index statistics.
- Plan sharing: In the past a database query that was executed more than once in parallel would result in multiple query plans which could be different (depending on the values provided at compilation time). When you are running ESD#3, plans for queries running in parallel are cloned, saving the cost of recompilation and ensuring that the queries use the same plan.
- Enhanced monitoring: You will see more metrics on several screens of the DBA Cockpit. Since we are using early versions of the ESDs in our development systems, we have already been able to include some of these in the DBA Cockpit versions released during summer 2012 (such as SAP_BASIS 7.02 SP12). For example: enhanced SQL statement statistics, spinlock monitoring, separation of I/O time in read time and write time… There are also new monitoring features that are going to be used in future versions of the DBA Cockpit. One example is the new history of database and transaction dumps.
- Talking about database and transaction dumps: There are several new features here that will make your life as a DBA easier. You can now run the dump transaction while a dump database is running. There is a new tool ‘sybrestore’ available with ESD#3 that will help you to restore the database when needed. We already updated our backup and recovery SAP Notes when ESD#2 was released to make use of the new features.
- Reorg rebuild can be run online. I don’t think I need to say more.
- The maximum size of a database is now 64TB. Just in case your compressed database was close to the 32TB limit before...
- Asynchronous DB initialization: If you are expanding your database, the database is now available immediately and initialization is done in the background.
There are a lot more features introduced with these two ESDs and if you are interested in details, please have a look at the Sybase documentation. Most likely I forgot to mention some really great feature but I think you see the point: there has been a lot of development done in Sybase ASE in the last few months to speed up SAP applications, to reduce downtimes, and to make your life as a DBA easier.
To sum it up: I really recommend updating to ESD#3.
More information on updating your database:
The key SAP Note for updating your SAP Sybase ASE database is:
1590719 SYB: Updates for SAP Sybase ASE
For details on installing ESDs, see these two SAP Notes:
1607816 SYB: Installing ESDs for Sybase ASE 15.7 (Windows)
1599814 SYB: Installing ESDs for Sybase ASE 15.7 (UNIX + Linux)
For ESD#2 there is a detailed release SAP Note you also might want to check:
1773862: SYB: Release info for Sybase ASE 15.7.0.021
The latest recommendations and requirements for database configuration are described in SAP Note
1539125: SYB: Configuration Guide for Sybase ASE 15.7.0
At the end of this SAP Note there is a section with release specific configuration guidelines. As you can see, two features that have not been supported for SAP applications with ESD#2 are now supported with ESD#3.
