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Sybase Inc.'s Sybase SQL Anywhere Professional 5.5 desktop database is reviewed. The product's small desktop footprint makes it ideal for mobile users. The program's executable code requires less than 2MB of RAM and about 10MB of disk space. SQL Anywhere's NetImpact Dynamo feature teams with SQL Anywhere Professional's SQL Remote replication features to create mobile intranets. For analysis, queries, and reporting, the InfoMaker component has report templates and a point-and-click query builder. For users who need to get around via intranet or remote sites yet still need some SQL power, SQL Anywhere Professional is an excellent tool.
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Keeping pace with demands from intranet and mobile users, Sybase Inc. has broadened the attraction of its strong SQL Anywhere desktop database. The latest release, Sybase SQL Anywhere Professional 5.5, includes one tool for creating, managing, and running Web-based applications and another tool for bidirectional replication via e-mail.
This powerful client/server desktop database clearly overpowers Microsoft Corp.'s Access, Borland International Inc.'s Paradox, and Lotus Development Corp.'s Approach. SQL Anywhere Professional's performance and its database features come closer to those offered by Oracle Corp.'s Oracle Lite and Personal Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and its own cousin, Sybase SQL Server 11. However, SQL Anywhere Professional is notably different from those powerful products due to its small desktop footprint, which makes it ideal for mobile users. This program's executable code requires less than 2MB of RAM (making it suitable for personal digital assistants) and about lOMB of disk space.
Drawing a card from its Powersoft Division, Sybase bundles its InfoMaker 5.0 reporting and analysis tool. SQL Anywhere Professional strengthens its ties with the System 11 family and still offers the same industrial-strength relational database features reported in my earlier review. (See Product Reviews, Jan. 15, page 93.)
Sybase has strengthened compatibility with SQL Servers procedural language Transact SQL, and SQL Anywhere Professional complies with the entry-level ANSI SQL92 and Federal Information Processing Standards 127-2. Enterprisestrength applications get support from row-level locking, referential integrity, stored procedures, triggers, query optimizers, and online backup and recovery features.
Making an impact
NetImpact Dynamo allowed me to build and manage a Web site using an applications server that linked its own Personal Web Server to the SQL Anywhere database. (It could also link to other ODBC data sources.) The toolkit includes applications servers for Common Gateway Interface-, Internet Server API-, or Netscape Server API-compliant Web servers as well as authoring and management utilities.
The principal elements in a NetImpact Dynamo Web site are its templates and scripts. Templates, which can be designed with the help of a wizard, contain static HTML documents with embedded SQL queries to retrieve active data elements. When creating queries in your browser, you'll benefit from the test-substitution and hostvariable support to qualify the responses. I had no problem making a template with an embedded SELECT statement to retrieve selected fields of product information sorted by description and size from a connected database. After using the wizard, I wasn't yet satisfied with the look of my results table.
To see those results, I used my browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, and set the URL to point to my local IP address with a path to the NetDynamo site and the form name I had chosen. I was then easily able to go back and revise the HTML code to refine the layout and titles. Editing the HTML code was simply a matter of double-clicking the form's name in the site directory's panel and making the changes. The SQL Anywhere Professional editor conveniently presents colorcoding listings that distinguish tags from commands.
NetImpact Dynamos scripts are programs written in Dynamo Script (a language like JavaScript), which generates HTML code. The NetImpact Dynamo applications server retrieves HTML templates from its site repository, processes the embedded SQL or script instructions, fetches the needed data from the database, and returns a composite HTML document to the Web server, which in turn passes it to the client browser. These templates and scripts are themselves stored in a Web-site database so that they can be organized and administered using SQL Anywhere's Explorerlike SQL Central database management utility - the same utility that's used to manage and administer databases.
NetImpact Dynamo teams with SQL Anywhere Professional's SQL Remote replication features to create mobile intranets. Using what some would call asynchronous message-based communications (but others would call e-mail), SQL Remote deploys databases, including NetImpact Dynamos Web sites, to remote dial-in users. Those users, when equipped with the SQL Anywhere Professional Client Seat, can then interact with an offline database, make changes, and later resynchronize with the main database when they call in for mail; it's like having a private, off-site intranet. SQL Anywhere Professional can scale up and replicate to SQL Server or other enterprise-level databases, acting as a replication go-between for remote users and enterprise data stores.
For analysis, queries, and reporting, the InfoMaker component has report templates and a point-andclick query builder. The InfoMaker Deployment Kit lets travelling users print local reports and charts that reflect the most recent information uploaded by SQL Remote during their last dial-in session.
For users who need to get around via intranet or remote sites yet still need some SQL power, SQL Anywhere Professional is a terrific tool.
Alan M. Stoughton is a client/server system design and database consultant located in Medford, N.J. He can be reached at [email protected].
Copyright InfoWorld Publications, Inc. Nov 4, 1996