A TECHNICAL LOOK INSIDE ASE 15.

ENHANCING DEVELOPER / DBA PRODUCTIVITY AND

OPERATIONAL SCALABILITY WHILE REDUCING TCO

PETER THAWLEY
SENIOR DIRECTOR / ARCHITECT, CTO OFFICE
NOVEMBER 2011
 <INCLUDE STANDARD.DISCLAIMER>

The development, release, and timing on any features

and functionality described for our products remains
at our sole discretion. The information on roadmaps is
intended to outline our general product direction and
should not be relied on in making a purchasing
decision.

This presentation discusses Sybase product futures

and includes Sybase proprietary and confidential
information.
2 – Company Confidential – March 20, 2012
 COMMON VISION: SAP AND SYBASE ASE
CO-INNOVATION FOR SHARED CHALLENGES

Market Reach and

Mind Share
Partners/Ecosystem Investment & Co-
innovation
Expanded
Market
Power for
Sybase ASE

• Price/performance
Packaged • Availability/Planned Downtime
Apps/SAP • Minimal/Self Management
Business Suite

• Price/performance
• Operational Scalability Custom
Custom • Extreme Performance
• Availability/Planned Downtime Apps/Most
Apps/High • Extreme Scale
• Developer Flexibility Market
End
Verticals

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 SAP AND SYBASE ASE

• ASE is now the “Database of Choice” for SAP Applications

– Strong alignment across R&D, sales & marketing opens up huge growth
opportunity for ASE
– Strong early interest from SAP customers looking to migrate to ASE &
partners
• SAP’s focus on strong business value and low TCO aligns well
with Sybase ASE focus on TCO

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 SAP ON SYBASE ASE 15.7
QA and Rollout plan

Bi-monthly “alpha” SAP on ASE SAP on ASE

drops given to Pilot Release to SAP on ASE
SAP Dev/QA Customers Customers GA
Oct ‘10 April ‘11 June ‘11 Q4’11

ASE 15.7
R&D

• Very tightly knit integration teams between ASE 15.7

SAP and Sybase GA
• SAP Business Suite testing & certification as Sept ’11
part of ASE GA will enhance quality for ASE
releases

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 ASE 15.7

• All ASE 15x releases part of same

release family (ASE 15x).
• ASE 15.5 & ASE 15.7 are ASE 15x IRs ASE/CE 15.7
ASE/CE 15.5
• ASE 15.7 is next intermediate release
ASE/CE 15.0.3
on ASE 15x
ASE/CE 15.0.1
– Follows ASE 15.5
ASE 15.0
– There is no ASE 15.6
• SMP version now GA
• CE version due Q1, 2012

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 ASE 15: KEY FOCUS AREAS

Application
Development
/Productivity

Performance / Large Data

Scalability Mixed Sets
Workloads
(Transactions &
ODSS)

Operational
Security Scalability /
Lower TCO

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 ASE 15.7 FEATURE SETS
• LOB Management
• Concurrency / Isolation Controls
• Language / syntax
Application
• Scripting language drivers Development
• Diagnostics & MDA enhancements /Productivity • Row / LOB Compression
• In-row LOBs
• DDLs with storage
optimizations

Performance / Large Data

Scalability Mixed Sets
• Query latency Workloads
reduction
• Kernel updates (Transactions &
• Replication ODSS)
performance

• Online Utils (Reorg rebuild)

• Fully recoverable DDLs
• Increased data availability
• Ease of Operational w/ DDLs
administration Security Scalability /
updates Lower TCO
• PCI-DSS support

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 ENHANCED LOB MANAGEMENT
• Reduced
LOB Network Traffic
Locators • Reduced Client
Side Memory

• Flexible Handling
T-SQL And of LOBs
JDBC/ODBC
API • Reduced Coding
Complexity

LOBS as
• Flexible Handling
Parameters of LOBs
in Stored • Reduced Coding
Procs
Complexity

• Storage Savings
In-Row • Performance
Storage Benefits for
Small LOBs

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 ENHANCED LOB MANAGEMENT
LOB LOCATORS
LOB locators / • Handle to a LOB that can be referenced in T-SQL statements
LOB datatype support and can be passed between server
and clients
• Client applications can send and receive locators as host
variables and parameter markers

Locator/LOB Locator

• Reference to a LOB value in ASE memory

• Can be passed between ASE and client
instead of actual LOB
• Can reduce memory requirement on
client side when LOB value not needed
on client side
• LOB handling supported by Open Client
& Open Server, ODBC, and JDBC drivers

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 ENHANCED LOB MANAGEMENT
T-SQL & DRIVERS SUPPORT FOR LOCATORS

T-SQL Updates
• truncate lob <locator> [(result-length)]
• Truncate to a specific length or deallocate
• return_lob (<datatype>, <locator>)
• Return actual LOB value
• setdata (<locator>, <offset>, <new_value>
• Overwri te some or part of LOB
• substring(<locator>, <start>, <length>)
• Extract a substring from the LOB and return new locator
• Also
• concatenate two LOBs
• Updated functions:
• charindex, char_length, datalength, patindex,

• jConnect JDBC Driver Support

• Client applications access locators using Blob, Clob and Nclob classes from the java.sql package
• Adaptive Server ODBC Driver Support
• ODBC API does not directly support LOB locators
• ODBC client must use T-SQL functions on the locators and manipulate LOB values
• ASE ODBC driver introduces several stored procedures to facilitate the use of these T-SQL functions

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 ENHANCED LOB MANAGEMENT
LOBS AS STORED PROCEDURE PARAMETERS

create procedure proc_name [@parameter_name LOB_datatype

as {SQL_statement}

Before
• Couldn’t declare varchar/varbinary/univarchar data exceeding ASE page size

Now
• Declare text/image/unitext LOB for local variable
• Pass local variable as input parameter to stored procedure
• Can prepare SQL statements that include LOB parameters
• Statement cache caches SQL statements with LOBs

• jConnect and ASE ODBC Driver both updated to handle LOBs as input
parameters in stored procedures
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 ENHANCED LOB MANAGEMENT
IN-ROW & OFF-ROW LOBS

Before
• LOBs always OFF-ROW: ASE always allocates a separate page chain for LOBs regardless
of LOB size.
• Can be very wasteful especially when dealing with small LOBs; mostly empty pages
• Performance penalty
Now
• IN-ROW & OFF-ROW support
• Can maintain LOBs IN-ROW for a pre-defined LOB size with automatic transfer to OFF-
ROW on expansion (due to updates of LOBs exceeding threshold size or other variable
length columns expanding)
• Big benefit to applications making heavy usage of small LOBs
• Relied on heavily in SAP Business Suite’s Deployments on ASE
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 OPTIMIZED STORAGE
• Storage Savings
• Reduced Memory
Compression
Consumption
• Lower I/O Demands

ALTER • Space savings

TABLE w/o • Performance
Data Copy
• Availability

• Storage Savings
Deferred Table • Ease of Enterprise App.
Materialization deployment & DB
Provisioning

• Storage Savings when

In-Row Avg LOB size is small
Storage • Performance Benefits
for Small LOBs

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 OPTIMIZED STORAGE
COMPRESSION

Data Compression
• Compression of regular
relational data in ASE rows
and pages

LOB Compression
• Compression of LOB data

• Reduce storage costs for online data

Storage

• Savings in I/O cost when caching compressed data

I/O

• Reduces memory consumption when caching

Memory compressed data

15 – Company Confidential – March 20, 2012

 OPTIMIZED STORAGE
DATA COMPRESSION

Row
Compression

Row Compression
Data
Compress Away Empty Spaces/zeroes in
Compression Fixed Length Columns. Gives benefit of
varchar without the programming effort

Page
Compression ABC 1 XX “AC”
ABC 1 XX “AC”

Page Compression
• Database • Page Dictionary Compression
Database Attribute for
default
• Repeatedly referenced data replaced by
token recorded in a page dictionary
• Similar to techniques used in Sybase IQ
• Individual
• Page Index Compression (done in ASE 11.9.x)
Table Columns can be
excluded • Duplicate Key Suppression – Columns
with duplicated values stored once and
• Treat active referenced by marker in row
partitions
Partition differently from
• Suffix Compression – Higher levels in
non-active ones. Index only store leading portion of key
required to navigate to next level down
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 OPTIMIZED STORAGE
LOB COMPRESSION

• Each LOB can be up to 2GB! Compression can be very handy!

• ASE backups can already be compressed
• LOB compression will follow same compression levels and algorithm choices
• Compression Techniques
• FastLZ and ZLib - Both are dictionary based lossless compression schemes
• FastLZ has lower CPU usage and execution times; ZLib has higher compression
ratios
• Compression scheme and level can be specified for each LOB column
• 9 compression levels overall (2 for FASTLZ and 9 for ZLib)
• LOB datatypes supported
• Text/Image/UniText and off-row Java Object
• XML is NOT supported yet
• Database, Table level and Column level support

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 DATA COMPRESSION IN ASE – STRATEGY

• Data is compressed on-disk and in-memory buffers

• Data is compressed on insert / update and uncompressed
when selected
• Compression can be defined:
• as DB-wide property (SAP Business Suite does this)
• Per-table, for applicable columns
• Per-partition
• Supported for APL and DOL user and #temp tables

• Implementation Note:
• SAP Business Suite Deployments – Compression Use Mandatory

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 STORAGE SAVINGS – IMPACT ON TPC-H
(BLIND SWITCH TO COMPRESSION – NO TUNING)
TPC-H Space usage
• Scale Factor 1
900
• 4K ASE page
800
• Data loaded by
700
Space Usage (MB)
BCP-in
600
• Reorg rebuild 500
generated page
400
compression
300
• DB Size reduced 200
from 1215 MB 100
to 800 MB
0
• 34% compression nation region supplier customer part partsupp orders lineitem
ratio Uncomp 1 1 2 27 30 130 180 846
PgComp 1 1 2 19 18 90 111 561

Compression Ratio 30% 40% 31% 38% 34%

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 STORAGE IMPROVEMENTS – SAP ERP
INSTALL
Space Usage (GB)
600

500 3.5X saving

400

300

200

100

0
Vanilla Compressed
Total Space 509.56 142.32

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 OPTIMIZED STORAGE
ALTER TABLE W/O DATA COPY

ALTER TABLE works on copy of data

for several operations, resulting in high
temporary space usage

ALTER TABLE in ASE 15.7

• Add a non-null column
• Drop a column
Post ASE
• Modify column type and nullability 15.7 GA

No Data
Copy

• Performance (time savings)

• Data availability (potentially reduced “outage” by
hours depending on table size)
• Temporary space / disk requirements reduced /
removed (previously full table copy made)
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 DIAGNOSTICS & MONITORING
• See show plan output in XML for a statement
in cache
Analyzing QP
plans: Show
• Shows execution plan, optimizer cost
cached plans estimate, params at compilation, params
in XML causing lowest query performance

• Can analyze dynamic parameters before

Analyzing QP running a query
plans:
Analyze • Display information about parameters in
dynamic dynamic sql statements
parameters

• SQL interface to statistics and histograms

• New stored procedure sp_showoptstats
Analyze (similar to optdiag standalone utility)
statistics & extracts and displays in an XML document
histograms statistics and histograms for various types of
data objects from system tables

• Collects comprehensive configuration,

Field
diagnostics monitoring, OS / platform environment and
utility external ASE files data
• Generates a .zip output file with HTML and
data files that can be viewed in a browser

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 DIAGNOSTICS & MONITORING
FIELD DIAGNOSTICS UTILITY

Customer hits a issue

• Help expedite customer case management and

problem diagnosis processes Sybase CS&S Can
• Reduces communication cycles & time burden View Diagnostics Data
on both customer and Sybase CS&S
in Browser

Single Command Zips up Commonly Required

Diagnostics and Environment Info

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 APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Scripting
Language • Sybase supported drivers
Drivers

• MERGE/UPSERT
• Sub-SELECT syntax
• Quoted Identifier
T-SQL Updates • Wider DOL rows
• No truncation of trailing 0x0
for binary data during INSERT

• SELECT FOR UPDATE

• Release read locks on cursor
Concurrency
close for Isolation level > 1
Enhancements
• Procedures/DDL commands in
chained transaction mode

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 APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
SCRIPTING LANGUAGES

Sybase
PERL
Post ASE
Sybase (Perl v5.14+ & 15.7 GA
DBI 1.616+) Sybase
PHP
Ruby
(PHP v5.3.6+)

Post ASE
Sybase 15.7 GA
DBC Sybase
Python API Django
(Python v2.6+)

CT-
Library
25 – Company Confidential – March 20, 2012
 APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
T-SQL UPDATES & CONCURRENCY ENHANCEMENTS
Feature Description Benefit
Merging data from source to • MERGE command allows transfer of rows from a source • Simplify data merge use cases
target table (MERGE/UPSERT) table (table, view, derived table) to a target table • Easy handling of duplicate key
• Inserts rows without matching key columns in target; if errors
matching ones found updates the target table with
values from source row
Sub-SELECT enhancements • Allow asterisk in sub-select with single column • Programming flexibility
• Allow column alias in sub-select
• Allow multiple column names in sub-select under
EXISTS
Quoted Identifier support • Will work on index names, and stored proc invocation • Programming flexibility
of object names (table, view, column, index)
No truncation of trailing 0x0 • Preserve any trailing zeroes for image / binary data • Maintain integrity of binary
during INSERT into VarBinary data stored in a column
columns
SELECT FOR UPDATE locking • Allows selected rows to be locked for a later update • Enhanced concurrency controls
semantics & isolation semantics
• Reduced deadlocks
Start offset on DOL Varlen • DOL variable length columns can begin at a larger offset • Can have “wider” DOL rows in
columns increased for 16K (32767 vs. previous 8192) schema
pages
Release read cursor locks at • Read locks can be released on closing of a cursor at • Programming flexibility
cursor close even for isolation isolation level 2 & 3 for active transaction • Free up resources when not
level > 1 • Configurable at cursor level required
Allow procs / DDL commands • All system procedures and select DDLs can run in • Programming flexibility
in chained transaction mode chained transaction mode
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 PERFORMANCE

Reduced
Query
Latency

Updated
Kernel

Replication
Performance

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 PERFORMANCE
Feature Description Benefit

QP Latency • Several individual enhancements to reduce QP • Application transparent

Reduction latency, especially for dynamic SQL changes to reduce query
• Reduce overhead to prepare for query execution response times
(optimized code path, shared query plans across • In-house tests how 2X
sessions via dynamic global sql cache) performance improvement on
• Improved performance of query execution engine JDBC / ODBC based TPCC
• Reduced communication overhead between workload
client & ASE when sending SQL statements to ASE
and when ASE sends query results to client
K21 – Hybrid • Better utilize parallelism in modern processor • Performance / scaling on
Threaded H/W (cores and H/W threads/strands) modern processors
Kernel for • Lower latency and overhead for I/O event • Lower latency for users and
the 21st processing system tasks with greater
Century predictability & consistency

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 HYBRID THREADED KERNEL – MOTIVATIONS
What the threaded kernel brings to the table.

Reduce Less More

“wasted” CPU Improve load consistent
interference
Streamline I/O balancing for
handling
cycles &
CIS & Rep
between CPU and
improve & I/O bound predictable
Agent work
efficiency work performance

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 ONE ADAPTIVE SERVER, TWO KERNELS

Pre-15.7 kernel Default kernel for

Process Kernel

Threaded Kernel
(except Windows) 15.7
Each engine is a Each engine is a
separate process thread of a single
Retained in 15.7 for process
risk mitigation Additional threads
for handling I/O, etc.
ASE on Windows has
always been thread
based

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 A NOTE ABOUT COMPATIBILITY…

The threaded kernel can be adopted without any

changes to applications, and with minimal
changes to configuration settings.

The new kernel was delivered to the SAP

Business Suite development team midstream.
No changes in the application layer were made
to use the new K21 kernel!

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 WHY K21 WORKS FOR CMT

• Modern operating system schedulers geared toward multi-

threaded process, not multi-process parallelism
• Single address space makes core - thread context switch less
expensive
• Engines lighter, more efficient as they don’t spin on i/o polling
• Elimination of i/o affinity “unclogs” ASE scheduling

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 EARLY PERFORMANCE RESULTS OF K21
Test Scenario – Contrived BCP Test to Show Rows per Total
Extremes Second Time vs. K21
K21 – Similar to 15.0.x best case 15,000 51 sec n/a
• No “Network Engine” dependencies now!
15.0.x – average case 2,800 276 sec -5X
• Execution & Network engine affinity split
15.0.x – worst case 25 ~10 hours - 600 X
• Execution & Network engine affinity intentionally
split
• Kept net engine “CPU busy” to add scheduler
latency
Test Scenario – Replication Agent Thread KB’s per Latency
Throughput Performance Second (µs) vs. K21
ASE 15.7 Threaded Mode 2,000 200 n/a
ASE 15.7 Process Mode 160 9,200 - 12 X

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 ASE 15.7 – VIRTUAL SERVER ARCHITECTURE (VSA)
CORE COMPONENTS OF THE K21 KERNEL (SINGLE NODE VIEW)

CPUs, Cores, Operating System

and Threads

Engine 0 Engine 1
… Engine N ASE OS Thread Pools
SPID 1 SPID 7 SPID 3 System Pool
Disks and Databases Clock, Link Monitor,
PSS PSS PSS Disk & Net I/O,
CT-Lib, CIPC
stack

stack

stack
KPROC KPROC KPROC
Blocking
Pool
Shared Executable (Program Memory) Blocking Requests

Data & Index Caches Shared Memory

Hash User Log Procedure and Run Queues of Sleep Queue Lock Chains
Caches Statement “Tasks” of “Tasks”
Caches
lock
sleep

disk
Hash Hash I/O Pending I/Os
D N
send I E
S T
Other Memory sleep K

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 SECURITY

Object
Ownership
Change

Login
Profiles

Dual Key
Control

Single Sign-
On

Stronger
P/W &
Hidden Text
Encryption

35 – Company Confidential – March 20, 2012

 SECURITY
OBJECT OWNERSHIP CHANGE

• Person who created an object may not be the

person maintaining it
• Changing employee responsibilities
• Employees joining and leaving
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Outsourced development, maintenance
• Solution: A DDL Utility to Change Object
Ownership conveniently

• Allows change of ownership of object(s) from

one owner / login to another

• Single command to transfer all objects

owned by a login

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 SECURITY
LOGIN PROFILES

Default

• Managing large numbers logins Database

Default
Profile Id
can be difficult Language

– Organizational policies change

and security systems need to Track Last Security Authenticate
quickly implement changes Login
Attributes With

• Login Profiles are SQL-Defined

containers of login attributes Stale Period Login Script
and their values Auto
Activated
– Groups of logins can share login Roles

profiles
– Easier to administer
– Provides flexibility to implement
security policies and comply with
regulations
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 SECURITY
Feature Description Benefit
Split knowledge • No one person alone can enable decryption of • Compliance with PCI DSS (Payments
& dual control encryption-keys Card Industry Data Security Standards
of keys • Stronger protection of encrypted data from Section 3.5/3.6) requirements
unauthorized access

Stronger • Role passwords are now hashed using one-way • Enhanced password security
password and secure hash (SHA-256); password complexity rules • FIPS 140-2 standards compliance
hidden text enforced
encryption • Strong encryption of external passwords and hidden
text (e.g. in syscomments) (using FIPS-140-2
modules)

Single sign-on & • Automatic passing of user credentials between • Ease of use
E-2-E Kerberos client, mid-tier and server layers • Single sign-on
credential • Single sign-on ASE to ASE connection through CIS
forwarding

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 OPERATIONAL SCALABILITY

Online
REORG

Fully
Recoverable
DDLs

ALTER TABLE
w/o Data
Copy

Shrink
Transaction
Log

39 – Company Confidential – March 20, 2012

 OPERATIONAL SCALABILITY
Feature Description Benefit
Online reorg • Perform reorg-rebuild online without blocking • Increased data availability and decreased
rebuild DML operations data disruption to business operations
Post ASE
15.7 GA

Fully recoverable • Use DUMP TRANSACTION to fully recover SELECT • Continuous & point in time recoverability
DDLs INTO, ALTER TABLE commands that require data of a database (even after DDL and
movement, REORG REBUILD minimally logged operations)
• These commands were minimally logged before • No need for DUMP DATABASE after these
• Use sp_dboption to fully log these commands operations are performed
• Operations can readily be embedded
within application logic
• Optimized logging (page vs row logging) to
minimize adverse performance effect
ALTER TABLE • Add a non-null column to a table without data • Performance (huge time savings)
operations copy; allows creation of non-materialized non- • Data availability (potentially reduced
without data null columns; table’s physical data is not changed “outage” by hours depending on
copy • Drop a column table size)
• Modify column type and nullability • Temporary space / disk requirements
reduced / removed (previously full table
Post ASE
copy made)
15.7 GA

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 SHRINKING THE TRANSACTION LOG

• New syntax:
alter database db-name
log off db_device [= size ]
[, db_device [ = size ]]
– Moves the log off the specified DB device
– Without size, removes it off the entire DB device
– With a size, removes that size, starting at the end of that device
• Only possible to move the log off a DB device if that part of the
log is currently empty (i.e. no allocated extents)
– Best practice should be add/remove whole devices at a time so keep the
first N devices sized accurately for normal operation

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 PLATFORM AVAILABILITY

ASE 15.5 ASE 15.7

HP-UX Itanium 64-bit  
IBM AIX 64-bit  
Linux Power 64-bit  
Linux x86-64  
Solaris SPARC 64-bit  
Solaris x86-64  
Windows x86-64  
Windows x86  
HP-UX PA-RISC 64-bit 
Linux x86 
Solaris SPARC 32-bit 

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 SUMMARY

• SAP Business Suite available on ASE Q4 2011

– Huge opportunities for ASE growth
– SAP and Sybase teams strongly aligned
– SAP / ASE focus on TCO benefits custom applications and
install base
• ASE 15.7 for Sybase customers now GA!
– Continuation of ASE 15x and follow-on release to ASE 15.5
– Major areas of focus
 Storage optimization & data and LOB compression
 Application development & application performance
 Operational scalability & TCO
– Early and extra QA testing, especially with new kernel and compression,
from SAP will pay dividends to Sybase customers
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