Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!paul.rutgers.edu!birnbaum
From: birnbaum@paul.rutgers.edu (Rich Birnbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Sybase
Keywords: opinions, experiences, problems
Message-ID: <Jul.24.15.28.39.1989.10362@paul.rutgers.edu>
Date: 24 Jul 89 19:28:39 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 45


My company is in the early stages of developing a database application.
We are using Sybase (version 3.0.2, going on 4.0 soon, we hope)
and some quirks/bugs/problems have us a bit concerned.
I'd be interested to know if anyone has come across any problems, specifically
the ones listed below.

I'd also welcome any other comments, pro or con, regarding Sybase.
In particular, how you compare it to other client-server relational DBMS
products (Ingres Version 6) and how it performs on 'large' tables
(about 100,000 rows, with about 50 columns for a total of about 275
bytes per row).  We will be joining such a table with a few smaller
tables quite often in the application.

1)  When running a complex query, the Data Server sometimes consumes the entire
    machine it is running on.  By this I mean it uses close to 100% of the
    CPU, users already logged in to the Data Server get no response and new
    users cannot log into it.  When this happens, we must kill the Data Server
    process and start it up again.

2)  The following queries, to my surprise, returned different results.

    select *
    from REGISTRATION
    where not exists
    (select * from DD_1556 where
    REGISTRATION.FYNO_REG=FISCAL_YEAR and
    REGISTRATION.DOC_TYPE_REG=COST_CENTER_1556 and
    REGISTRATION.SERIAL_NO_REG=SERIAL_NUMBER)

    returns 0 rows, while

    select FYNO_REG,SERIAL_NO_REG
    from REGISTRATION
    where not exists
    (select * from DD_1556 where
    REGISTRATION.FYNO_REG=FISCAL_YEAR and
    REGISTRATION.DOC_TYPE_REG=COST_CENTER_1556 and
    REGISTRATION.SERIAL_NO_REG=SERIAL_NUMBER)

    returns 6 rows, my expected result.  Note that the queries are identical
    except for the SELECT list.

Please post responses or e-mail to either birnbaum@pica.army.mil or
birnbaum@paul.rutgers.edu.