Solutions for Relational Databases: Sybase

Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) achieved a 50 percent performance improvement in its demanding electronic customs manifesting system using DataDirect connectivity to Sybase. Companies like OOCL have found out that their choice of third-party solution for Sybase can have a significant economic and technical impact on an application throughout its life cycle.

Following are the key results you can expect from choosing DataDirect for your applications that need to access Sybase or that need to query Sybase data for XML purposes.

Save Time and Money in Testing and Development

DataDirect's support for Sybase can dramatically speed the development process by employing a consistent, reliable means of data connectivity through the ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET standard APIs. In addition, if you need to query Sybase data for use in XML applications, we offer DataDirect XQuery - an implementation of the W3C XQuery standard that helps you develop applications that deal with XML faster. With DataDirect, developers spend less time on managing data connectivity and integration issues and more time on the application's business logic and user requirements. The reasons for this are:

• No Sybase database client libraries required - DataDirect products for Sybase provide direct communication between the application and the database, eliminating the need for the native database client. This greatly reduces the cost to develop, test, and deploy applications because the database client is not needed. In addition, application issues relating to client version issues are eliminated.
• Support for multiple versions of Sybase from a single component – This eliminates the need to test, deploy and maintain Sybase client software, which can escalate costs in environments using multiple Sybase versions. By contrast, other vendors require multiple drivers for each Sybase database version and may also require multiple versions of the Sybase database client.
• Strict adherence to open standards – DataDirect's commitment to interoperability and complete compliance with data connectivity standards (ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET) ensures no adoption of proprietary extensions. This means that your developers won't have to keep up with proprietary changes in the underlying data connectivity layer and allows us to offer database-independent support for features such as stored procedure escape syntax, date/time escape syntax, connection failover, and database load balancing. This true cross-database interoperability also lowers development costs for organizations with applications that need to access more than one corporate database such as Oracle, DB2, and Microsoft SQL Server.
• Common architecture – All DataDirect products share a common code base that makes it easy for developers to update code when the underlying database is changed or upgraded. If your applications require access to databases other than Sybase or maintain different versions of Sybase, this can be an important feature. It enables more code reuse because our products abstract the differences between various corporate databases and between different Sybase versions. In addition, all DataDirect products offer SQL leveling─the ability to write a SQL statement that can be executed across multiple databases or database versions.
• Advanced feature support – In addition to supporting the full range of Sybase features, DataDirect provides database-independent functionality such as support for distributed transactions, connection pooling, connection failover, database load balancing, escape syntax, and support for Windows authentication for more secure connections. Other components for Sybase that are missing critical features such as these force developers to compensate by spending time coding workarounds or deploying applications with missing functionality. Lack of support for these features can also adversely affect application reliability and performance.
• Support for processing XML and Sybase data – DataDirect's XQuery product helps you get XML projects done faster because it doesn't require any servers or additional software like other XQuery implementations on the market. Because DataDirect XQuery resides in the middle tier, along with your application, your XQueries and application are insulated from any changes to the Sybase database or other underlying software.

Simplify and Reduce Costs in Deployment

DataDirect components can save your organization a significant amount of time and money in the process of planning, executing, and debugging Sybase applications for these reasons:

• Avoid deployment problems due to Sybase client libraries - DataDirect components do not require the use of Sybase client libraries, which can create a variety of deployment problems because of file size and lack of compatibility across multiple database versions. Each time an application is deployed or upgraded, developers can spend hours or days configuring and debugging problems related to the Sybase client libraries.
• Application upgrades and enhancements – When applications need to be migrated to the latest version of Sybase, developers can simply use DataDirect to call the data source, instead of learning the particulars of the new data source. Development effort can be focused on new application or enhancement requirements instead of new database connectivity issues.
• Support for all major platforms and application server environments – DataDirect supports connectivity to Sybase in heterogeneous corporate environments. For example, for ODBC applications, we support Windows, Linux, and UNIX platforms.
• Fully backwards-compatible – DataDirect's Sybase components are fully backwards-compatible with previous releases of the database so you can readily support different database versions without having to install and test an additional driver.
• Reduced maintenance for Sybase-XML applications – Our XQuery product adheres completely to the W3C XQuery Standard, whereas other XQuery tools use proprietary extensions, requiring additional coding and re-coding of XQueries every time a new version of the tool is released.

At Runtime: Improve Application Performance, Scalability and Reliability

Using DataDirect components in your Sybase applications can reduce system downtime and results in faster, more reliable interactions with employees, customers, and partners. Here is why:

• Consistent high performance – Direct access to Sybase databases through our clientless architecture improves application response time. DataDirect components are optimized for maximum performance within a range of scenarios, especially for applications that are read intensive─for both single-threaded and multi-threaded connections. Our products also come with a Performance Tuning Wizard (for ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET) that allows you to fine-tune your environment to increase performance and decrease network traffic.
• Improved scalability - Multi-threaded scalability tests ensure DataDirect products for Sybase make the most efficient use of network traffic, disk I/O, and memory.
• Tested for stability – The quality of our products is verified through a stringent test process, including tests for standards compliance and thousands of tasks representing load-intensive production environments. In addition, our XQuery product provides stability for developers through our standards-based XQuery and XQJ (XQuery for Java) implementations. DataDirect XQuery passes the XML Query Test Suite (XQTS) with 99+% compliancy.

Data access and XML processing can be complicated. That's why it's also important to ensure your product for Oracle is backed by knowledgeable and responsive customer support professionals. At DataDirect, we offer 24-hour technical support, including phone, web, email, forum, and fax support. Our knowledgebase is the largest in the industry with over 2500 documents.

To learn more about the economic and technical benefits of choosing DataDirect for your Sybase applications, read the Nucleus Research report, ROI Evaluation Report of DataDirect's Data Connectivity Products.

To speak with an expert about DataDirect products for Sybase, please call 1-800-876-3101 or submit a Request for Information form and an account executive will contact you.