ASA User's Guide

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ASA User's Guide

Part 1 Working with Databases

Chapter 1: Running the Database Server

Introduction

Adaptive Server Anywhere provides two versions of the database server:

The personal database server
This executable does not support client/server communications across a network. Although provided for single-user, same-machine use(for example, as an embedded database engine(it is also useful for development work.
On Windows 95 and Windows NT the name of the personal server executable is dbeng6.exe. On Windows 3.x the name of the personal server is dbeng6w.exe, on UNIX operating systems is dbeng6.
The network database server
Intended for multi-user use, this executable supports client/server communications across a network.
On Windows 95 and Windows NT the name of the network server executable is dbsrv6.exe. On Novell NetWare the name is dbsrv6.nlm, and on UNIX operating systems it is dbsrv6.

Server differences

The request-processing engine is identical in the two servers. Each supports exactly the same SQL, and exactly the same database features. The main differences include:

Network protocol support
Only the network server supports communications across a network
Number of connections
The personal server has a limit of ten simultaneous connections. The limit for the network server depends on your license.
Number of CPUs
The personal database server uses a maximum of two CPUs for request processing.
Default number of internal threads
You can configure the number of requests the server can process at one time using the
```
-gn
```
command-line switch. The default number is different, however.
For information on database server command-line switches, see The database server .
Startup defaults
To reflect their use as a personal server and a server for many users, the startup defaults are slightly different for each.

First steps

You can start a personal server running on a single database very simply. For example, on most operating systems you can start a personal server and load the sample database by running the following command in the Adaptive Server Anywhere installation directory:

dbeng6 asademo

The personal server is the executable dbeng6.exe, and the sample database is the file asademo.db.

Where to enter commands

You can enter commands in several ways, depending on your operating system. For example, you can:

type it at a system command prompt.
place the command in a shortcut or desktop icon.
run the command in a batch file.
include the command as a startline parameter in a connection string.

There are slight variations in the basic command from platform to platform, described in the following section.

You can also start a personal server using a database file name in a connection string. For more information, see Connecting to an embedded database .

Platform-specific instructions

The way you start the database server varies slightly depending on the operating system you use. This section describes how to enter command lines for the simple case of running a single database with default settings, on each supported operating system.

Notes

These commands start the personal server (
```
dbeng6
```
). To start a network server, simply replace
```
dbeng6 
```
with
```
dbsrv6
```
. The network server is unavailable on Windows 3.x.
If the database file is in the starting directory for the command, you do not need to specify path.
If you do not specify a file extension in database-file, the extension .db is assumed.

To start the database server using default options (Windows NT):

Use a Program Manager icon to hold a command line, or enter the following command at the command prompt:

start dbeng6 path\database-file

If you omit the database file, a window is displayed allowing you to locate a database file from a Browse button.

To start the database server using default options (Windows 95/98):

Use a Program Manager icon to hold a command line, or enter the following command at the command prompt:

start dbeng6 path\database-file

If you omit the database file, a window is displayed allowing you to locate a database file from a Browse button.

To start the database server using default options (Windows 3.x):

Use a Program Manager icon to hold a command line, or enter the following command line in the Run dialog box:

dbeng6w path\database-file

You can run only one Windows 3.x server on a given computer at one time. There is no network server for Windows 3.x.

To start the database server using default options (UNIX):

Start the database server with the following command:

dbeng6 path/database-file

There is no personal server for Novell NetWare, just a network server.

The database server for NetWare is a NetWare Loadable Module (dbsrv6.nlm). An NLM is a program that you can run on your NetWare server.

To start the database server using default options (NetWare):

Load a database server on your NetWare server as follows:

load dbsrv6.nlm path\database-file

The database file must be on a NetWare volume. A typical filename is of the form DB:\database\sales.db.

You can load the server from a client machine using the Novell remote console utility. See your Novell documentation for details.

You can put the command line into your Novell autoexec.ncf file so Adaptive Server Anywhere loads automatically each time you start the NetWare server.

Starting the server for a Java-enabled database

If you are running a server with a Java-enabled database, and you wish to carry out Java operations, you must allow additional cache memory for the Java VM. You can do this by setting a cache size of 8 M for development work:

dbeng6 -c 8M path\database-file

On Unix platforms, you need a minimum cache size of 16M:

dbeng6 -c 16M path\database-file

For more information on cache size, see Controlling performance and memory from the command line .

For information on memory management for Java, see Configuring memory for Java .

What else is there to it?

Although you can start a personal server in the simple way described above, there are many other aspects to running a database server in a production environment. For example:

You can choose from many command-line options or switches to specify such features as how much memory to use as cache, how many CPU's to use (on multi-processor machines), and the network protocols to use (network server only). The command-line switches are one of the major ways of tuning Adaptive Server Anywhere behavior and performance.
You can run the server as a service under Windows NT. This allows it to keep running even when you log off the machine.
You can start the personal server from an application, and shut it down when the application has finished with it. This is typical when using the database server an embedded database.

The remainder of this chapter describes these options in more detail.


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