Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Connecting to Foxhound 3 With Crystal Reports

The Foxhound database is completely open for read-only access via SQL queries; it's one of the hallmarks of Foxhound:


Open Access: read-only SQL access to all the historical data pertaining to your database: it's your data, you own it. The Foxhound FAQ contains sample queries, and to make your own queries easier to write important internal primary key values are displayed together with the data on the Monitor and other pages; e.g., sampling_id, sample_set_number and the new connection_id_string.
You can use the ADHOC / SQL user id and password to connect to the Foxhound database via ISQL and Sybase Central. For example, here's what the Start - All Programs - Foxhound3 - Tools - Adhoc Query Foxhound Database shortcut uses:
ECHO OFF
ECHO Start DBISQL for Adhoc Queries

SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS

IF EXIST "%SQLANY16%\Bin64\dbisql.com" ( GOTO use_Bin64 )
GOTO use_Bin32
 
:use_Bin64
"%SQLANY16%\Bin64\dbisql.com" -c "ENG=foxhound3; DBN=f; UID=ADHOC; PWD=SQL; CON=Foxhound3-ADHOC" 
GOTO end

:use_Bin32
"%SQLANY16%\Bin32\dbisql.com" -c "ENG=foxhound3; DBN=f; UID=ADHOC; PWD=SQL; CON=Foxhound3-ADHOC" 

:end
PAUSE
The Foxhound FAQ contains more examples:
When it comes to using a commercial report writer like SAP Crystal Reports it's easiest if you first create an ODBC DSN:
User ID:        ADHOC
Password:       SQL
Server name:    foxhound3
Database name:  f
Then you can plunge right into the Crystal Reports wizard with the new DSN:
One last tip: It's probably easier to deal with Foxhound's Views than the base tables (the view names are friendlier)...

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

SQL Anywhere 16 Crushes Oracle, DB2 in TPC-C Price/Performance

SQL Anywhere 16 has rocked the TPC-C benchmark at 19 cents per transaction per minute...

    Total System Cost:  U$ 21,160.00 
          Performance:  112,890 transactions per minute
    Price/Performance:  19 cents per transaction per minute  
Here's what the overall ranking looks like, with Oracle coming in a distant second at 47 cents...



Want a historical perspective?


Have a look at this list to see how TPC-C numbers have improved over the years, including SQL Anywhere 11...
    Total System Cost:  U$ 17,540.00 
          Performance:  20,705 transactions per minute
    Price/Performance:  85 cents per transaction per minute  



Friday, November 21, 2014

Visualizing Connection-Level Resource Consumption

Question: How do I determine which connections use the most resources? Sybase Central 12 doesn't show CPU and RAM consumption.

Answer: Sybase Central and other tools all get their connection-level performance statistics from the builtin SQL Anywhere connection properties, and closest thing to a connection property for "RAM consumption" are TempFilePages and TempTablePages, with TempFilePages being the more useful of the two.

TempFilePages Returns the number of temporary file pages used by the connection.

TempTablePages Returns the number of pages in the temporary file used for temporary tables.
The closest connection property to "CPU consumption" is ApproximateCPUTime, and there are many other properties like RollbackLogPages that may also be of interest to you:
ApproximateCPUTime Returns an estimate of the amount of CPU time accumulated by a given connection, in seconds. The value returned may differ from the actual value by as much as 50%, although typical variations are in the 5-10% range. On multi-processor computers, each CPU (or hyperthread or core) accumulates time, so the sum of accumulated times for all connections may be greater than the elapsed time. This property is supported on Windows and Linux.

RollbackLogPages Returns the number of pages in the rollback log.
Unfortunately, Connections pane in Sybase Central 12 doesn't show any of those connection properties and there's no way to tell it to.



You can, however, tell the SQL Anywhere 12 DBConsole utility to display all those connection properties:



Here's how to launch DBConsole and connect to a running SQL Anywhere 12 database:
"%SQLANY12%\bin32\dbconsole.exe"^
  -c "ENG=inventory12_envy;DBN=inventory12;UID=dba;PWD=sql;"
Unfortunately, unlike Sybase Central, DBConsole doesn't show the 8 internal connections that were spawned when the "k.delacruz" connection used intra-query parallelism to execute a runaway query. It also doesn't show any CPU time at all being consumed by the "k.delacruz" connection, which is true but profoundly misleading: the "k.delacruz" connection may not be using any CPU time but its eight minions are using up everything that eight CPUs have to offer.

The Foxhound 3 Database Monitor shows it all: all the internal connections, all the CPU time they are using, plus the total CPU time is also shown against "k.delacruz":



Foxhound also saves all the data it captures so you can look back in time to see what an individual connection was doing...



You can read more about Foxhound in the white paper here.


Wednesday, November 5, 2014

The New Foxhound 3 Connection History Page

One of the new features in Foxhound 3 is the Connection History page. Previously, if you wanted to see the performance history of one single connection over time you had two choices, both unattractive:

  • Repeatedly redisplay the History page to see all the connection data for each successive sample, then repeatedly scroll through the (hundreds of?) connections to find the one of interest, or

  • code an adhoc query for the connection of interest... if you could figure out what column(s) to use to uniquely identify a single connection (connection number isn't enough).
The Connection History page does all that for you; here's an example showing three samples for a single connection that executed a SELECT statement (one sample) followed by a CALL (two samples):

The next example shows a connection "347 / g.mikhailov" that
  • was first blocked by a row lock held by a second connection "346 / h.barbosa",

  • and then blocked again by a third connection "389 / s.winkler" after the Foxhound AutoDrop feature dropped the second connection:

You can still code an adhoc query to show the same thing, and Foxhound 3 makes it easier with the new sample_connection.connection_id_string column.

Here's what the Foxhound 3 Help says about the Connection Id String:

The Connection Id String column is an artificial identifier constructed by Foxhound to uniquely identify each target connection within the entire Foxhound database.

Foxhound uses this string to create URLs for opening new Connection History pages. You may find it useful when creating adhoc queries to select all the history for one connection. It is stored in the sample_connection.connection_id_string column, and there is an index on that column.

Here's the format of the Connection Id String:
ss-cc-yyyymmddhhnnss-sss
where...
ss                   sample_connection.sampling_id - unique identifier to each target database sampling session
cc                   sample_connection.connection_number  
yyyymmddhhmmss-sss   DATEFORMAT ( sample_connection.LoginTime, 'YYYYMMDDHHNNSS-SSS' ) 

Here's an adhoc query that uses a simple (and efficient) WHERE clause using the value '1-347-20141029161934-088' from the screenshot above:
SELECT CAST ( sample_connection.connection_number AS INTEGER ) AS "Conn#",
       CAST ( sample_connection.UserId AS VARCHAR ( 20 ) ),
       DATEFORMAT ( sample_header.sample_finished_at, 'Mmm Dd yyyy Hh:nn:ss AA' ) AS "Connection Samples",
       CAST ( sample_connection.BlockedOn AS INTEGER ) AS "Blocked By",
       CAST ( sample_connection.blocker_table_name AS VARCHAR ( 10 ) ) AS "Table",
       CAST ( sample_connection.blocker_reason AS VARCHAR ( 50 ) ) AS "Reason"
  FROM sample_connection
       INNER JOIN sample_header
               ON sample_header.sample_set_number
                = sample_connection.sample_set_number
 WHERE sample_connection.connection_id_string = '1-347-20141029161934-088'
 ORDER BY sample_connection.sample_set_number DESC;

      Conn# UserId               Connection Samples       Blocked By Table      Reason                                             
----------- -------------------- ----------------------- ----------- ---------- -------------------------------------------------- 
        347 g.mikhailov          Oct 29 2014 4:20:38 PM          419 inventory  Row Transaction Intent, Row Transaction WriteNoPK  
        347 g.mikhailov          Oct 29 2014 4:20:28 PM          389 inventory  Row Transaction Intent, Row Transaction WriteNoPK  
        347 g.mikhailov          Oct 29 2014 4:20:17 PM          389 inventory  Row Transaction Intent, Row Transaction WriteNoPK  
        347 g.mikhailov          Oct 29 2014 4:20:07 PM          346 inventory  Row Transaction Intent, Row Transaction WriteNoPK  
        347 g.mikhailov          Oct 29 2014 4:19:58 PM          346 inventory  Row Transaction Intent, Row Transaction WriteNoPK  
        347 g.mikhailov          Oct 29 2014 4:19:47 PM            0 (NULL)     (NULL)                                             
        347 g.mikhailov          Oct 29 2014 4:19:37 PM            0 (NULL)     (NULL)    


Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Foxhound 3 Versus The Alternatives

(The following is an excerpt from The Foxhound 3 Database Monitor white paper.)


A database monitor is a computer program that measures the activity of a database management system and displays those measurements in a meaningful way so you can see everything's OK... or quickly learn about problems and threats to performance and availability.

Foxhound 3 is a third-party database monitor for SAP® SQL Anywhere®. Here's how it works:
  • Every 10 seconds Foxhound retrieves performance statistics from your database.

  • Foxhound then

    • stores these statistics in its own SQL Anywhere 16 database,

    • performs summarization and other value-added calculations, and

    • displays the results via HTML using SQL Anywhere's built-in HTTP server.
Figure 1 shows the Foxhound Monitor page for a lightly-loaded SQL Anywhere server with 134 connections, one of which is blocked by an uncommitted operation made by a long-running transaction on another connection.

Figure 1. The Foxhound Monitor Page Showing An Idle Server With One Blocked Connection


Table 1 compares Foxhound Version 3 with four alternative products:
Table 1. Comparing Foxhound 3 With Alternative Products
SQL Anywhere Monitor 16Sybase Central Performance Monitor 16DBConsole Utility 16Windows 7 Performance MonitorFoxhound 3
Primary purposeHealth and availability monitorPerformance monitorConnection monitorPerformance monitorHealth, availability and performance monitor
Setup requiredA lotEverythingSomeEverythingVery little
Collection interval30 sec default, 10 sec minimum1 sec fixed 4 sec default, 1 sec minimum1 sec default, 1 sec minimum10 sec fixed
PresentationGraphs, TextGraphsTextGraphsText
ImplementationAdobe FlashJavaNative WindowsNative WindowsHTML
Historical dataYes---Yes
Adhoc reporting----Yes
SQL Anywhere statisticsSome, variableAll, variableAll, variableAll, variableSome, fixed
Latency measured----Yes
Peaks recorded----Yes
Database Alerts9 point-in-time events---32 conditions
Alert "All Clear"----Yes
Drop connectionmanual-manual-AutoDrop
Target databases supported11, 12, 16, On Demand 1.011, 12, 16, On Demand 1.011, 12, 16, On Demand 1.05.5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, On Demand 1.05.5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, On Demand 1.0
Target hosts supportedlocal, networklocal, networklocal, networklocallocal, network
MobiLink and Relay Server supportYes----
What's good?PrettyFreeFreeFreeBusinesslike
What else?ConfusingHideousBasicHideousCrowded

Primary purpose: The SQL Anywhere Monitor omits the phrase "performance monitor" from the docs as does DBConsole.

Setup required: Both DBConsole and Foxhound let you "connect and go" to see something useful while the others require varying degrees of effort just to get started.

Collection interval: Only one Foxhound customer has ever asked for "faster", nobody wants "slower".

Presentation: Nobody's ever asked for graphs so they remain a low-priority item for Foxhound.

Implementation: How a product was built can explain a lot about how it looks and feels and works.

Historical data: This sets the SQL Anywhere Monitor and Foxhound far, far apart from the others.

Adhoc reporting: This is about historical data, not retrieving current statistics from SQL Anywhere or Windows.

SQL Anywhere statistics: Like the collection interval, Foxhound's choice of which statistics to display is fixed.

Latency measured: Response time isn't one of the statistics provided by SQL Anywhere.

Peaks recorded: Peak values are displayed as hypertext links into Foxhound's historical data.

Database Alerts: Events happen once, conditions go into and out of effect.

Alert "All Clear": It's important to know when an Alert condition is no longer in effect.

Drop connection: Runaway connections are a big deal in some shops... not all, but some.

Target databases supported: Foxhound support for Version 5.5 databases will disappear someday, but not yet.

Target hosts supported: The Windows 7 Performance Monitor reports on the computer it's running on.

MobiLink and Relay Server support: The SQL Anywhere Monitor is the only game in town for this.

What's good? "If you had to use a single word to describe what you like about..."

What else? "Give me another word, this time describing what you don't like about..."


Monday, November 3, 2014

What's New In Foxhound 3

A new version of the Foxhound database monitor for SQL Anywhere is now available; here's what's new...

1. Release-Defining Features
2. New Features
3. Usability Improvements
4. Behavior Changes
5. Bug Fixes

1. Release-Defining Features    

  1. Support for SQL Anywhere 16 and OnDemand 1.0 target databases has been added.

  2. The new Connection History page shows the performance of a single connection over time.

  3. The Blocked Connections section of the Foxhound Monitor page has been merged into the Connections section.


2. New Features    

  1. The new Change Target Settings page lets you set RememberLastPlan, RememberLastStatement and RequestTiming.

  2. The Machine, Server, Database names have been added to page titles and Alert messages.

  3. The new OS User column has been added to help identify connections: Conn #, ID, OS User, IP, Name.

  4. The new Busy, Wait, Idle columns have been added for each connection.

  5. The Conns connection count column has been expanded to show Parent and Child Conns.

  6. The new total Waiting Time column has been added to the Foxhound Monitor.

  7. The new Last Plan Text column has been added to the connection section.

  8. The new Favorable? YYY column has been added as a link to open the Change Target Settings window.

  9. You can now specify Purge after [xx] day(s) instead of being limited to 1 day, 1 week, 1 month or 1 year.

  10. The new Purge - Off / After xx days column has been added as a link to the Purge section of the Foxhound Options page.

  11. CPU Time calculations have been improved for connections using intra-query parallelism.

  12. The new total Rollback Log and Uncommitted columns have been added to the Foxhound Monitor page.

  13. The separate Req, Commits and Bytes In/Out columns have been gathered into the new connection-level Volume... Req, Commits, Bytes columns.

  14. The new Connection Id String can be used to uniquely identify connections in adhoc queries; e.g., '1-1-20140504073924-692'.

  15. A new emergency patch process is built in to Foxhound for fixing bugs without running a full upgrade.

  16. Five new Alerts have been added:
    Database read-only,
    Database updatable,
    Rollback log usage,
    Uncommitted operations and
    Long uncommitted.

  17. The new DB File and Used columns have been added to the Foxhound Monitor.

3. Usability Improvements    

  1. Major layout changes have been made to the Foxhound Monitor and Sample History pages, including the connection sections.

  2. The new Hide Details and Show Details buttons let you reduce scrolling on the Sample History and Connection History pages.

  3. The new Show More and Show Less buttons let you expand and contract the Last Statement and Last Plan Text connection data.

  4. A new warning about duplicate Foxhound sampling sessions has been added to the Foxhound Monitor page.

  5. The Foxhound option to show the Help frameis turned back on when Foxhound is upgraded, as a reminder that new Help content is available.

  6. Descriptive text has been added to all menu items on the Monitor Options page.

  7. The Peaks since timestamp has radically abbreviated to reduce horizontal scrolling.

  8. Alert email error messages have been improved.

  9. Concise Alert titles are included in all Alert-related messages; e.g., Alert #10: Partner unreachable.

  10. The Foxhound post-setup process has been streamlined.

  11. A new Start Foxhound via default browser shortcut has been added.

  12. There's no more "Can't open Message window log file" message when starting Foxhound.

  13. The Adhoc Schema connection string has been renamed to Foxhound 3 Adhoc Schema - autostart and connect.

  14. The handling of the diagnostic text files produced during the Foxhound Post Setup process has been improved.

  15. Scrolling on the Sample History page is faster.

  16. Color highlighting of Foxhound Monitor data has been improved.

  17. The sampling id and DSN or Connection String name are now appended to all target-related email exception diagnostics.

  18. The Running Time,
    Waiting Time,
    Transaction Time
    and other durations have been abbreviated to make them easier to read.

  19. There are no longer any limitations on the number or names of multiple Extended Edition Foxhound servers.

  20. Some Help topics previously found only in the Foxhound FAQ have been moved to the Help.

  21. The number of processors has been moved from the heading section to the CPU Time xx% of x column, with a link from the Peaks since line.

  22. The HTML generated by Foxhound now works better with the zoom features in Chrome, Firefox and IE.

4. Behavior Changes    

  1. SQL Anywhere 16.0.0.1915 or later is required to run Foxhound 3.

  2. The Cumulative CPU Time and Total Waits columns have been removed from connection-level displays.

  3. The Client Requests, Time columns have been removed from connection-level displays.

  4. The Total, Current Prepares and Rollbacks columns have been removed from connection-level displays.

  5. The Bytes In / Out columns have been removed from connection-level displays and summarized in Volume... Req, Commits, Bytes.

  6. Alert #11 HA failover has been renamed to Alert #11 ServerName change.

  7. The Waiting Req column has been renamed to Unsch Req to reduce confusion with SQL Anywhere documentation.

  8. Alert #14 Waiting Requests has been renamed to Alert #14 Unscheduled Requests.

  9. The Last Statement sort order is only changed when you click on the title text, not the data value.

  10. The security rules are different for connecting to SQL Anywhere 16 target databases.

  11. The dbsrv16 -ufd restart option has been added to the desktop shortcuts to keep Foxhound running.

  12. Foxhound is no longer being extensively tested on Windows XP or IE8.

  13. The Rollbacks column has been removed from database-level displays.

  14. The Checkpoints column has been merged into the Checkpoints, Checkpoint Urgency, Recovery Urgency column set because the values are related.

  15. The Log Writes column has been merged into the Disk Reads, Disk Writes, Log Writes column set because the values are related.

  16. The Free Disk Space Sys, Temp, Log, Other columns have been moved to the heading section because the values don't change very often.

  17. The Throughput... Commits column has been rounded so rates like 0.099/s are displayed as 0.1/s, because the extra precision was not helpful.

5. Bug Fixes    

  1. Support for Snapshot Isolation has been added, thus eliminating the fatal "Cannot convert 'Snapshot' to a decimal" error.

  2. The "Column '@alert11_actual_current_ServerName' not found" error has been fixed.

  3. A bogus Alert #9 Arbiter unreachable is no longer issued for an OnDemand database.

  4. The ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW statement has been moved after CREATE INDEX on the Display Schema page.

  5. The click here to sort on list has been made version-specific.

  6. A bogus Alert #1 Database unresponsive is no longer issued when Foxhound is started after being upgraded.

  7. The email status is no longer displayed as "Email sent, status unknown." before the attempt to send an email is actually made.

  8. The popup tips for several Alert and AutoDrop criteria fields on the Monitor Options page have been changed to "Percent, 1 to 100".

  9. The minimum input value for the AutoDrop #3 Long transaction duration field on the Monitor Options pages has been changed to 1.0s.

  10. Bad input values entered on the Monitor Options page for integer Alert and AutoDrop criteria fields are now silently changed to the minimum allowed values.

  11. The Foxhound Options - Purge Run report no longer displays 2 as the number of Orphan/Old Sample Set Rows Deleted when no change is reported in the total number of rows.

  12. The Start Foxhound via Chrome shortcut no longer has trouble finding Chrome.

  13. The No Transaction Log curiosity message is no longer displayed for read-only databases.

  14. An error message is displayed instead of suppressing the sample when Foxhound can't call sa_locks() to diagnose a blocked connection.

  15. The handling of invalid SQL Anywhere property values coming from target databases has been improved.

  16. Heartbeat durations are no longer rounded upwards; instead, values between .001s and 0.099s are changed to 0.1s to distinguish them from 0s.

  17. Foxhound no longer tries to AutoDrop the same connection more than once.

  18. The CPOOL=NO connection parameter has been added to the connection string Foxhound uses to connect to target databases.

  19. It is now possible to start Foxhound in Safe Mode when it is run as a service.

  20. Safe Mode startup now marks all timed out sampling sessions as no longer timed out, just stopped.

  21. The Foxhound Options Timeout Retry - never retry setting now works properly.

  22. Concurrent usage of the Global Overrides sections of the Foxhound Options and Monitor Options pages is now properly handled.

[Top]


Monday, September 15, 2014

Zombie Connections

A zombie connection is a runaway SQL Anywhere database connection that doesn't go away after a DROP CONNECTION. You can keep executing DROP CONNECTION statements and they won't return an error, but the won't do anything. The connection isn't of any use to any client application but from SQL Anywhere's point of view it's still running... it is a zombie connection.

Here's what a zombie connection looks like in the Foxhound Monitor page...


Reading upwards from the bottom, here's what happened...

  • 8:57:55 AM The connection count (Parent/Child Conns) rose from 128 to 129 as "k.delacruz" started an ISQL session named "adhoc-queries".

  • 8:58:06 AM The "k.delacruz" connection became a runaway with this faulty cross join:
    SELECT a.*
      INTO #temp_inventory
      FROM inventory AS a,
           inventory AS b 
    

  • 8:58:41 AM Foxhound has issued Alerts #21 and #22 because "k.delacruz" was using up temporary file space at a great rate.

  • 8:59:26 AM Foxhound executed a DROP CONNECTION statement for the "k.delacruz" connection because of the temporary file usage.


  • 9:03:07 AM It's three and half minutes later and all the Alerts have been cleared, but the "k.delacruz" connection has become a zombie... SQL Anywhere is still busy freeing up all that temporary file and rollback log space.
In the next Foxhound sample (not shown here) the connection count dropped back to 128 as "k.delacruz" finally disappeared. The moral of the story is this: It's OK to kill runaway connections, but don't try to deal with zombie connections; let SQL Anywhere do that job. Even if you kill the server, SQL Anywhere will still have to finish applying the rollback log during recovery.




Thursday, September 11, 2014

Technical Summit Agenda, Hotel Details

The SQL Anywhere Technical Summit will be held in Waterloo from 9 AM Wednesday November 5 through 12:15 PM Friday November 7, 2014.

The travel and hotel details are here. There's an October 4 deadline on the special hotel rate, plus you might have to call to book, the online reservation system has a tendency to refuse requests, plus email confirmation messages "can take up to an hour" ( how is that possible in 2014? :)

Here's the agenda (subject to change)...

Wednesday November 5, 2014
 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Introductions and SAP
10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Break
10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. SQLA Performance and Tuning
12:15 p.m. –  1:30 p.m. Lunch (provided)
 1:30 p.m. –  3:30 p.m. SQLA New Feature Overview
 3:30 p.m. –  3:45 p.m. Break
 3:45 p.m. –  5:45 p.m. SQLA Performance and Tuning

Thursday November 6, 2014
 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Mobilink Performance and Tuning
                        Introduction to Synchronization
10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Break
10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. SQLA Application Architectures
12:15 p.m. –  1:30 p.m. Lunch (provided)
 1:30 p.m. –  3:30 p.m. SQLA Advanced Topics
                        SQLA and SAP HANA
 3:30 p.m. –  3:45 p.m. Break
 3:45 p.m. –  5:45 p.m. SQLA Advanced Topics
                        Data Synchronization Advanced Topics

Friday November 7, 2014
 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. SQLA Advanced Topics
10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Break
10:45 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. SQLA Advanced Topics
11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Wrap up, Feedback and Q&A

Friday, September 5, 2014

The fRiDaY File - Protecting Software

Question: How do I prevent our application from synchronizing via MobiLink from a device that's different from the original device the application was installed on?

Is there a solution built in to SQL Anywhere 16 or do we have to build it ourselves?

Short answer: There is no solution built in to SQL Anywhere/MobiLink.

Long answer: It is a simple requirement, but it is one that has spawned an entire industry: "How do I uniquely identify the computer on which my application is running?" Try asking that question on Google; I get 30,400,000 hits.

There are a lot of simplistic solutions (MAC address is a favorite) but they immediately lead to followup questions: "How do I let users move the application to a different computer when the first one is stolen/lost/destroyed/upgraded?" and "How do I deal with spoofed MAC addresses?"

There are no known solutions that meet all of these criteria:

  • economical to implement,

  • reliable, and

  • user-friendly.
Many solutions (e.g., the one used to protect Sybase software like PowerBuilder) fail to meet ANY of those criteria... IMO anyway :)

The solution I prefer ("Rely on the honesty of users") is known to meet two of the three criteria (economical, user-friendly)... whether it meets the third criteria (reliable) is something I prefer not to think about :)




Wednesday, September 3, 2014

SQL Anywhere Technical Summit November 5 to 7



PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE SAP SQL ANYWHERE® TECHNICAL SUMMIT, WHICH WILL INCLUDE LECTURES, DEMOS, AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO MEET SAP SQL ANYWHERE ENGINEERS AND MEMBERS OF THE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT TEAM, AS WELL AS INTERACT WITH YOUR DEVELOPMENT PEERS. THE SUMMIT WILL TAKE PLACE IN WATERLOO, CANADA, ON NOVEMBER 5–7, 2014. THIS FREE EVENT WILL COVER A VARIETY OF TOPICS AND SESSIONS ON SAP SQL ANYWHERE DATA MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE, INCLUDING:

  • UPCOMING RELEASE DISCUSSION, INCLUDING NEW FEATURE PREVIEWS

  • SAP SQL ANYWHERE WITHIN SAP

  • SAP SQL ANYWHERE CORE CONTENT, INCLUDING DETAILED PERFORMANCE AND TUNING INFORMATION

  • MOBILINK INTERNALS, INCLUDING PERFORMANCE AND NEW DEVELOPMENTS FOR THE INTERNET OF THINGS AND MOBILE APPS

  • INTRODUCTORY MOBILINK AND ULTRALITE DISCUSSIONS FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN EXPLORING DATA SYNCHRONIZATION

  • DATA MANAGEMENT FOR OEMS WISHING TO MOVE TO CLOUD SOLUTIONS
SPACE IS LIMITED FOR THIS EVENT, SO WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO REGISTER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

WHEN YOU REGISTER, PLEASE COMPLETE THE QUESTIONNAIRE TO PROVIDE INSIGHT INTO YOUR USE OF SAP SQL ANYWHERE AND POSSIBLE TOPICS TO COVER DURING THE EVENT.

WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU IN NOVEMBER.

BEST REGARDS,

SAP SQL ANYWHERE PRODUCT TEAM

FOR MORE QUESTIONS CALL PAM BARROWCLIFFE +1-(519)-883-6352


Please note that invitations are non-transferable.
This offer is extended to you under the condition that your acceptance does not violate any applicable rules or policies within your organization. If you are unsure whether your acceptance may violate any such rules or policies, we strongly encourage you to seek advice from your ethics or compliance official. For organizations that are unable to accept all or a portion of this complimentary invitation and would like to pay for your own expenses, SAP is happy to provide a reasonable market value and an invoice or other suitable payment process. Please find out whether the participation is taxable under your local tax laws. If you have any questions, please contact your employer's HR department or your tax advisor. We would like to inform you, that SAP will bear the German income tax according § 37 b income tax law for benefit in kinds to customers.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Database Workbench adds support for SQL Anywhere 16

Earlier versions of the Database Workbench development environment supported SQL Anywhere versions 10, 11 and 12, and now Database Workbench Version 5 supports SQL Anywhere 16.





Monday, August 25, 2014

ISUG-TECH Conference March 29 to April 2 in Atlanta

It's not ISUG any more, apparently, it's ISUG-TECH... and the "S" now means "SAP" not "Sybase": Independent SAP Technical User Group.

Pedantry aside, here's a recent email...


We're sending this email to let you know that pre-registration for our 2015 conference is now open. This will be held March 29-April 2nd in Atlanta, GA, USA. We look forward to welcoming members and non-members alike from around the world. Attendees from 17 countries attended the 2014 event -- we'd like to best that and reach 25 countries this time around!

Why pre-register?

Pre-registration is free, doesn't commit you to going to the conference, but does give you an additional $200 discount off the conference fee when actual registration opens if you do attend.

In addition you have a chance to tell us the kinds of sessions/topics you'd like to see covered at the 2015 event. This will help us shape the best conference for everyone. This is your chance to tell us what you want to see in order for you to attend.

So, if you are thinking of attending, or are trying to get travel approval to attend, or need another reason to convince the powers-that-be that they need to send you to the conference, or just want to save some extra $$$ if you're paying your own way, be sure to pre-register now at www.isug.com/techwave2015/preregister.

Best Regards,
The ISUG-TECH Conference Team

Thursday, August 21, 2014

A delightfully pedantic look at a single line of bad code

This article isn't about SQL Anywere, or SQL, but it could be... because simple coding errors are possible in just about any programming language...


"Though it is unknown whether this vulnerability was ever exploited, it rendered hundreds of millions of devices (and users) vulnerable over the course of 17 months."
Finding More Than One Worm In the Apple by Mike Bland, from ACM Queue May 12, 2014

Mike Bland's seven-page article discusses one single bad line of code; it's written in C, so if you know even a little C you'll see what's wrong right away...
if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.update( 
   &hashCtx, &signedParams)) != 0) 
   goto fail; 
   goto fail;
... or not.

The article's subtitle kinda gives it away: "If you see something, say something."

In other words, the line that LOOKS wrong IS wrong... and the article is proof that pedants really do have more fun :)




Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Where Google Groups went to die

Once upon a time there were CompuServe forums, then there were NNTP newsgroups, then Google Groups, and then... nothing.



Or is there?


The following ancient comment inside a SQL script led to the discovery of a possible Google Groups burial ground (or is it an afterlife?)...
-- The FORWARD TO string may be limited to 4008 bytes for a 4K database page size.
-- See Google Groups: 
--    "forward to" 4008 group:*.sqlanywhere.*
That Google search once led to a page on Google Groups, now it leads here: Is there a size limit on FORWARD TO?



Here's the site; maybe it's worth registering to get full functionality, if you have ancestral needs: codeverge.com






Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Don't book d-code yet, unless...

If you have ALREADY DECIDED to attend the d-code conference then HURRY UP AND REGISTER before Friday, August 1, 5:00 p.m. PDT if you want to save US$200 per person.

However, if you have NOT decided yet, then WAIT for a week or two because there might be an announcement that will cause you to skip d-code altogether.




Monday, July 28, 2014

SAAP Is Built On SQL Anywhere

SAAP, which stands for SAP Always Available Platform, is a new product being prepared for release in the fourth quarter of 2014. It consists of an SAP UI5 application using a SQL Anywhere database to provide local SAP ERP functionality at a remote site even when a network connection is not available. SAAP then uses MobiLink to synchronize the remote SQL Anywhere database with SAP ERP at headquarters when the network is available.

This is big news for SQL Anywhere... HANA is SAP's flagship database product, not SQL Anywhere, yet SAP is using SQL Anywhere to build a new component for its other flagship product (SAP ERP)... and once it's released SAAP will probably use all five products: SAP UI5, SQL Anywhere, MobiLink, SAP ERP and HANA.

SAP doesn't talk much about SQL Anywhere, but not only is SAP fully supporting SQL Anywhere, SAP is using it to build other products!

So far the only publicly-available documentation of SAAP is a 20-minute video of a presentation by Jay Marqua, CIO of the Vantage Drilling Company, at the Sapphire Now conference on June 3, 2014. In the video Jay talks about the successful proof-of-concept where Vantage and SAP Waterloo got together to build SAAP for use on Vantage's remote drill rigs...



Help Ensure Complete Functionality in Remote Environments

Put innovative software functionality to use anytime, anywhere, even in remote terrain. Rely on an always-available platform from SAP that provides comprehensive functionality even when disconnected. Take advantage of a simplified user interface that is fully extendable for any SAP software transaction.

Vantage Drilling's Story

Jay Marqua, CIO of Vantage Drilling, discusses how he worked closely with SAP to develop an always-available system that can deliver LAN-quality communications to offshore crews, transform corrective maintenance into predictive maintenance, avoid costly downtime, create a responsive inventory system, and deliver functionality wherever it’s needed.

...watch now >>

Here are a few screenshots from the video, with transcripts of the slides...

The Vantage Fleet 
- We have built a fleet of new, premium assets that
  our customers demand now and for the future.
- Cobalt Explorer, a 7th generation dual-
  activity UDW drillship equipped with (2) 
  seven-ram BOP's and 10,000 feet of riser, 
  scheduled for deliver in 2015, will be our 
  most technically advanced drillship.
- Jackup fleet has achieved approximately 99% 
  productive time for the first 60 months of operations.
- High-specification drillships combined with deep in-house operations and technical teams,  
  have been the key to awards to Vantage of high-profile, complex, ultra-deepwater projects.


SAAP Solution Challenges - Offshore drilling, high latency VSAT - Other industries with high latency communications - Remote locations (off shore and on) - Disconnected environments - Poor infrastructure, power outages, network instability, etc. - Any area with lack of redundant carrier networks in place
The SAAP Solution - Co-innovation solution between SAP and Vantage - Key tenets of the solution for Users: 1. LAN-based Speed 2. Complete functionality even when disconnected 3. Simplified user interface - Key Architectural tenets of the solution: - Make SAP functionality always available anytime, anywhere - Fully extendable for any SAP transaction - Applicable and extendable for other verticals - Rapid deployment - Build to be an SAP product
SAAP Solution Description - SQL Anywhere running on the rig as a distributed data store (remote database) - 'In the background' Mobilink Synchronization processes transactions to be executed in ECC - Processing between SAP and the SAAP-tables within SAP are via BAPIs in Exchange tables - The User on the rig uses UI5 (HTML5) to talk to the distributed database
SAAP Architecture Schematic On Rig Always Available App SQL Anywhere Database Server Reports and attachments TCPIP scheduled Periodic MobiLink client Synchronization using Internal Satellite Connection On Shore MobiLink Synchronization Server ODBC using database user SAP ECC on shore Staging Z-Table on the R3 MS SQL Scheduled ABAP SAP/R3 File share for Template deployment Reports and Attachments
Demo... sample screenshot 1 of 2 Demo... sample screenshot 2 of 2
SAAP Results - 100 SAAP facilitated transactions: MM, PM, IM - Developed, Tested, UAT, Deployed in the field - POC: 3 people, 3 rigs, 3 weeks - Rapid deployments. - Overnight on SAP rigs - 3 days when migrating from PM, MM, IM legacy systems
What do the Users think? 1. Fast 2. Easy to use 3. Always Available
SAAP plans going forward? - Some considerations for Development: - Continue to push more functionality offshore: MII, HSE, HCM, etc. - Predictive analytics and condition based maintenance - Business Results: - Save on training, TCO - Facilitates employee performance and business continuity - Accelerates user adoption - Proven foundation for providing more functionality with the goals of performance, systems continuity and cost savings
SAAP - SAAP approved to productized - Productization underway - Maintained by SAP support and maintenance - Product is planned to ship in Q4 - Potential Verticals - Oil and Gas - Aerospace and Defense - Transportation - Retail - Mining - Chemical