Sybase Database, Tools Scale Up

Sybase expands the capabilities of its DBMS and development tools to ease application integration.

Sybase Inc. is expanding the capabilities of its relational DBMS and development tools to smooth out application integration bumps and help customers build service-oriented architectures.

The Dublin, Calif., vendor is touting new scalability, application enablement and security features in its flagship ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise) 15 database, as well as ease-of-use features in its PowerBuilder 10.0 and DataWindow .Net development tools.

Sybase will announce the beta release of ASE 15 at its TechWave user conference in Orlando, Fla., this week. Due by mid-2005, the product crystallizes Sybases push to treat the database as a services platform, officials said. To boost scalability, ASE 15 has a new query processor engine and a new partitioning infrastructure. It supports up to 2 billion storage devices per server and up to 4TB per device and adds shared-disk clustering support.

ASE 15 supports native XML and native Web services and extends real-time messaging services to new buses to boost developer flexibility. As to security, the software features native data encryption, Federal Information Processing Standards 140-2-compliant SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) support and ISO 15408 Common Criteria Certification.

Also at TechWave, Sybase will introduce the PowerBuilder rapid application development tool upgrade and the new DataWindow .Net tool, which aim to assist development of applications for ASE 15. New capabilities in PowerBuilder 10.0 include simplified access to .Net data and database operations via PowerBuilder ActiveX Data Objects .Net interfaces. The next version of PowerBuilder will feature built-in .Net, officials said.

PowerBuilder 10.0, due this week, lets developers perform object modeling and application refactoring through a plug-in to PowerDesigner, Sybases modeling tool. Version 10.0 features Unicode support for multibyte characters.

Check out eWEEKs interview with Sybase CEO John Chen. To simplify coding for customers using .Net application development tools, PowerBuilder 10.0 includes a copy of Sybases DataWindow .Net, which provides data access, complex logic and data presentation to .Net applications.

According to industry analysts, application developers are feeling the squeeze to build software that is more aligned with complex integration and an increasing emphasis on the impact of SOAs (service-oriented architectures).

To enable PowerBuilder to deal with a wider array of integration-type developer activities and service orchestration, Sybase must open the product to support application servers outside the Sybase family, said Stephen Hendrick, an IDC analyst in Framingham, Mass. Nevertheless, Hendrick said Sybase has earned high marks for bolting PowerDesigners muscle onto PowerBuilders abstracted developer environment; that will give developers an early leg up in marshaling current services.

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