May 05, 2015

This might be the biggest announcement from SAP you never heard of. After dropping the name Sybase from its product names last year, SAP is quietly reshaping its database platform offerings. And I mean this in a good way.

Under the Sybase name there were 2 ASE products; Sybase ASE Enterprise Edition (EE) and Sybase ASE Small Business Edition (SBE). The Sybase ASE EE product was and still is the flagship and the most commonly known edition of Sybase. But it came with a hefty price ticket. To offer a Sybase ASE database server to the SMB market space, Sybase created ASE SBE, limited to 2 CPU sockets and 8 engines on a physical server, at a very low price.

The server virtualization revolution has dramatically changed the server landscape and database servers made their transitions to the new world. The majority of newly deployed database servers are virtualized, either on-premise or in the cloud. The Sybase ASE EE 15.7 database server enabled Sybase clients to make the move to the virtual servers with the introduction of the threaded kernel model. SAP ASE EE 16 continued the optimization for virtual servers and offers one of the most advanced database servers in the market.

However, Sybase ASE SBE never made the step into the virtual world and that was bad news for SMB, who are trying to save money on infrastructure costs. Hence the introduction of SAP ASE Edge Edition.

SAP ASE Edge Edition 16 will retire the old Sybase ASE SBE. It is based on the SAP ASE EE 16 edition with a limit of 4 cores. There will be an SAP ASE Edge Edition 15.7 available later this year. Other than that, SAP pulled out the stops and created an entry-level ASE server that packs features that other databases only offer in their enterprise edition, but set a price point that competes with other vendor’s standard edition database.

The following matrix shows the comparison between SAP ASE Edge Edition and Sybase ASE SBE. But pay close attention to the options that are now included and compare this to other vendor’s standard offerings.

Limits / Options ASE Edge Edition ASE SBE (retired)
Max Engines No Limit 8
Max Cores OS can use 8 No Limit
Max CPU Chips No Limit 2
Max Concurrent User Connections No Limit 256
Options
High Availability na check na check
Disaster Recovery Package na check na check
Security and Directory Services checkmark na check
Encrypted Columns checkmark na check
Partitions checkmark na check
Active Messaging na check na check
Compression checkmark na check
In-Memory Database na check na check
Advanced Backup Services (TSM) na check na check
Enterprise Connect – Oracle na check na check
Enterprise Connect – ODBC na check na check

checkmark (included)  na check (Not Available)

SAP ASE Edge Edition also includes unlimited cores of SAP Replication Server Premium Edition, restricted to warm standby capabilities of SAP ASE Edge data.

If you’re running Sybase ASE SBE today in either server or user based licensing, you should take a closer look at SAP ASE Edge Edition. The savings in server virtualization alone can justify the investment.

If you’re running a shareware database server and would like to upgrade to an enterprise class database system, running on Linux and Windows servers, you should talk to us about SAP ASE Edge Edition.

If you’re planning on implementing a commercial database server in your company and or product, SAP ASE Edge Edition should be on your checklist.

Contact us today to learn more about SAP ASE Edge Edition.

Another great tool in the SAP Edge Series is SAP IQ Edge Edition, Big Data analytics on a budget. Like SAP ASE Edge Edition, SAP IQ Edge Edition is an Enterprise level Analytical Engine at entry level pricing.