User's Guide
   PART 5. The Adaptive Server Family
     CHAPTER 31. Adaptive Server Anywhere as an Open Server       

Setting up Adaptive Server Anywhere as an Open Server

This section describes how to set up an Adaptive Server Anywhere server to receive connections from Open Client applications.

  Comparison with SQL Anywhere Version 5

SQL Anywhere Version 5 provided support for Open Client applications using the separate Open Server Gateway executable. This executable enabled SQL Anywhere to appear as an Open Server to Open Client applications.

There is no Open Server Gateway in Adaptive Server Anywhere Version 6. Instead, the Adaptive Server Anywhere database server can be set up to act as an Open Server itself. This change simplifies setup, improves performance, and cuts down dramatically on the memory and disk resources required to provide Open Client access to your databases.

  System requirements

There are separate requirements at the client and server for using Adaptive Server Anywhere as an Open Server.

Server-side requirements 

At the server side, in order to use Adaptive Server Anywhere as an Open Server, you must have the following:

• Adaptive Server Anywhere server components     You must use the network server (dbsrv6.exe) if you want to access an Open Server over a network. You can use the personal server (dbeng6.exe) as an Open Server only for connections from the same machine.

• TCP/IP     You must have a TCP/IP protocol stack in order to use Adaptive Server Anywhere as an Open Server, even if you are not connecting over a network.

• TDS     The Open Server interface uses the Tabular Data Stream (TDS) protocol for exchanging data between client and server.

Client-side requirements 

In order to use Sybase client applications to connect to an Open Server, including Adaptive Server Anywhere, you need the following:

• Open Client components     The Open Client libraries provide the network libraries that your application needs to communicate via TDS.

• DSEdit     You need dsedit, the directory services editor, to make server names available to your Open Client application.

  Starting the database server as an Open Server

If you wish to use Adaptive Server Anywhere as an Open Server, you must ensure that it is started using the TCP/IP protocol. By default, all available communications protocols are started by the server, but you can limit the protocols started by listing them explicitly on the command line. For example, the following command lines are both valid:

dbsrv6 -x tcpip,ipx asademo.db
dbsrv6 -x tcpip -n myserver asademo.db

The first command line uses both TCP/IP and IPX protocols, of which TCP/IP is available for use by Open Client applications. The second line uses only TCP/IP.

You can use the personal database server as an Open Server for communications on the same machine, because it supports the TCP/IP protocol.

The server can serve other applications through the TCP/IP protocol or other protocols using the Adaptive Server Anywhere- specific application protocol at the same time as serving Open Client applications over TDS.

Port numbers 

Every application using TCP/IP on a machine uses a distinct TCP/IP port, so that network packets end up at the right application. The default port for Adaptive Server Anywhere is port 2638. It is recommended that you use the default port number, as Adaptive Server Anywhere has been granted that port number by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). If you wish to use a different port number, you can specify which one using the ServerPort network option:

dbsrv6 -x tcpip{ServerPort=2629} -n myserver asademo.db

Open Client settings 

To connect to this server, the interfaces file at the client machine must contain an entry specifying the machine name on which the database server is running, and the TCP/IP port it uses.

     For details on setting up the client machine, see Configuring Open Servers with DSEDIT.

  Configuring your database for use with Open Client

Your database must be initialized or upgraded to Adaptive Server Anywhere Version 6 or at least version 5.5.03 of SQL Anywhere.

Ensure your database is compatible 

Any Adaptive Server Anywhere database that is recent enough ( 5.5.03 or above) can be accessed using the Open Server interface. However, if you are using Adaptive Server Anywhere together with Adaptive Server Enterprise, you should ensure that your database is created for maximum compatibility with Adaptive Server Enterprise.

     For information on creating Adaptive Server Enterprise-compatible databases, see Creating a Transact-SQL-compatible database.