Connecting to Sybase

These notes were written for Sybase v12.5, and the Sybase ODBC Driver SYODASE.DLL.

Prerequiste Software

In order to connect to a Sybase database, you need to install the Sybase Client. When you install this, make sure the ODBC Driver is selected as part of the install.

Configuring the Sybase ODBC Driver

In order to access your Sybase server using AQT, you will need to configure an ODBC Datasource for your server. The general process for doing this is described in Configuring a Database Connection.

To configure this, specify:

• Datasource Name. The name you give this ODBC datasource.
• Description. Not used. Leave blank.
• Network Library Name. Winsock.
• Network Address. This is specified in the form of hostname,port. Example: sybnt1,2048. If the database resides on the same machine as your client, specify a hostname as localhost (eg. a network address of: localhost,2048).
• Database Name. The name of the database you are to connect to. Leave blank to connect to the default database.

In addition, there are some settings on the Performance tab which we recommend you set:

• Select Method 1-Direct
• Prepare Method 2-Full
• Fetch Array Size Increasing the value beyond the default of 50 can improve performance quite noticeably. We suggest a value of 200 or higher. The optimum value of this settings depends on your network configuration and amount of data you commonly query

It is recommended that you click on Test Connect to ensure that your connection has been configured correctly.

AQT Options

In addition, we recommend you set the AQT Option > Technical Parameters > For Sybase and SQL Server, use SET ROWCOUNT. This is discussed in more detail in Rowcount for SQL Server and Sybase.