Sybase has announced the availability of its SQL Anywhere 12 database and synchronization solution. A core component of the Sybase Mobility Platform, SQL Anywhere is optimized for mission-critical database applications running outside traditional data center environments requiring little or no onsite IT support. According to Chris Kleisath, senior director of engineering, SQL Anywhere 12 represents a major platform release, providing many key new enhancements for performance and scalability such as support for storage and synchronization of spatial data, support for iPhone devices, and new self-management features.
New spatial support enables tracking, location-ware querying, data management and synchronization of spatial data; support for OGC and SQLMM standards for spatial data types and APIs, native import for shape files and built in functions to export to KML, GML and SVG formats.
SQL Anywhere 12 also includes scale-out support to allow high transaction volume database servers to offload read-only and reporting transactions to a self-managing tree of scale-out servers, notes Kleisath. Additionally, the new release provides self-management capabilities, such as server thread auto-tuning that automatically adapts to changing workloads, self-healing statistics management, and synchronization dynamic cache sizing for environments where resources are changing in real-time and DBA support is not readily available.
In a key enhancement for large-scale synchronization environments, Anywhere 12 includes the ability to execute performance tests, states Mike Paola, director of product management, explaining that one of the challenges that exists when designing and implementing in a large environment is how to analyze the scalability of a design, and ensure that the hardware environment, synchronization environment, and back-end database can handle the expected load from users. This kind of capacity planning has been very difficult or even impossible to perform in the past, he says. SQL Anywhere 12 introduces new capabilities to enable testing of the environment, including the ability to simulate a very large number of remote users, customize transactions to simulate real-word activities, and record/replay actual synchronization streams. This tooling will enable customers to better plan and implement the proper hardware and server environments to provide the throughput necessary for their users, saving much time and effort.
With mobility tools to manage, monitor, diagnose and deploy large-scale sync environments on various device platforms, the addition of iPhone support in SQL Anywhere 12 makes Sybase the only database vendor to provide such capabilities for Blackberry, Windows Mobile and iPhone, according to the company. Additional developer productivity enhancements include new Oracle/MySQL compatibility; support for .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010; and enhanced full-text search filtering capabilities.
SQL Anywhere was built from inception to be embedded into a server, remote workgroup or mobile application. More than 10 million users have benefited from applications that have been deployed by ISVs who rely on the SQL Anywhere embedded database server to power their business critical systems. SQL Anywhere 12 (including pricing) will be available in Q3 of 2010. To learn more about SQL Anywhere 12, go here.