Little History and Big hopes for the Future of Sybase Products!!

Sybase ASE was the true RDBMS (Think ahead of decades) :

We all aware that a relational database refers to a database that stores data in a structured format, using rows and columns. This makes it easy to Organize, control, locate, feed and access specific entities within the database. It is "relational" because the entities within each table are related to each other. Tables may also be related to other tables. The relational structure makes it possible to run queries across multiple tables at once.

A thought of sharing resources and distributing the data and RDBMS components :)
How great it was. Thought of multiple Applications with relevant  common data to use a Single  Server/Instance but multiple Databases. Now the RDBMS is not  referring to just a relation between tables of the same database but across multiple Databases :) Is it not the highest extent of relational abstraction and encapsulation and Can't we say Sybase was the true RDBMS?

Three and Half decades ago Four Legends i.e. optimistic and futuristic entrepreneurs  Robert Epstein, Mark Hoffman, Jane Doughty, and Tom Haggin found Sybase (initially as System ware) in Epstein’s home in Berkeley, California.

The distributed architecture of Servers/Instances and Multi-Tenancy which is now in wild use and many latest DBMS/RDBMS/DDBMS are accustomed for optimal use of resources and ease of maintainance was actually Sybase’s core Architecture.

Multi-Database architecture is where multiple Applications run their own separate Database, all on a common hardware platform. Whereas Multi-Tenant architecture consists of multiple customers using a single instance of an application running on a single instance of an operating system on a common hardware platform, with only a database or data-source being different between customers. Many multi-tenant solutions leverage a common database instance, but both architectures can support giving each customer their own separate database.

Three Decades ago Sybase was the future of RDBMSes as most Customers, especially Military, BFSI, Transportation, Trading and Healthcare Clients strongly believed and encouraged Sybase Products for the significant pros of the Product over other popular RDBMSes during that time (Sybase supports multi Databases and multi Servers Architecture).

A few Pros till today :

• Cost effective based on the use of common hardware, resources and Man Power.
• Allows for greater flexibility and control of configuration, customization, updates and backup/recoveries.
• Less risk of harmful attacks that can impact performance, reliability, or data security.
• The architecture is simplified and allows for growth and flexibility of deployment.
• Encapsulation yet Abstraction of Databases in a Single Server.

• Ease of Maintenance and Administration  via use of common hardware and resources.
• Requires less hardware in provider data center
• Less time and resources required to update/upgrade large numbers of Applications backend.
• Suited to support consumer scale applications.

What is the FUTURE of Sybase (Once it was Future of RDBMSes)?

I have been continuously searching, reading, blogging and wondering to know the current and future state of Sybase Products i.e. ASE but also IQ and SRS. May be past few years the progress or statistics of ASE are not much encouraging but good Days are coming :)

As per the DBEngines rankings, Sybase is currently at the 19^th place where as SAP HANA into Top 20 almost First time just above ASE at 18th Rank. BTW, ASE was slipped to 21 last Month but re-entered back into Top 20 and hope it will reenter Top 10 like in mid 2000s.

 

Based on the information provided by Neil Whitehead the future looks bright again for Sybase Products.

(My sincere Thanks to Rob Sir and Neil Sir for the cited information)

The 2 key points of the information was:

1. SAP has confirmed long term development and support for our on premise versions of ASE, IQ and Replication Server.

·       We have a new version of ASE coming in Q4 this year

·       We have a new version of IQ coming in Q2 2021

                + I hope to posting more announcements later this month.

2. In order to provide our customers with a Cloud journey we announced that we would be releasing new PAAS ASE, IQ and Replication Server products in Q1 2021. The 3 Sybase products will be offered as part of SAP HANA Cloud and be fully on-demand, elastic, managed  and consumption based.

·     SAP HANA Cloud is currently live with a HANA Service and Data Lake Service (based on IQ) and the 3 Sybase products will be added as additional services next year.

·    Note: SAP HANA Cloud isn’t a “SAP cloud” but it is a service that we can make available on Azure, AWS and GCP – A customer can choose which hyperscaler to deploy to.

·    SAP will take care of the operational management of the services (essentially like AWS RDS) the difference though is SAP will be responsible for everything.

You may also want to subscribe to a new series of Sybase Webinars that will start next week.

https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/2256735/4848867A6458A4FEC0F92EFA96FDCF18/928669

So Sybase Gurus and all DBAs/Developers please keep a smile and be optimistic philanthropists on the ASE, IQ and SRS as I believe soon SAP launches new releases and promote even better.

Be Safe and Pleasant!! Future is Bright!!