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From: cheeks@edsr.eds.com (Mark Costlow)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Sybase gripes
Message-ID: <5716@tantalum.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jan 91 00:17:09 GMT
Sender: usenet@tantalum.UUCP
Reply-To: cheeks@edsr.eds.com
Organization: EDS Research
Lines: 43

Hi.  I'm in charge of administering a moderately large sybase database, and
I've run into a couple of things that bother me.  So, I thought I'd whine
a little and see if anyone else has worked around these problems:

	1.  Remote tape drives.  

	    In this age of networked computers, and considering all of the
	    network-based functionality that sybase DOES have, not
	    supporting remote archive devices seem completely ludicrous.
	    Has anywone done anything to work around this problem?  (I was
	    thinking one could set up a FIFO as a "disk byte stream" dump
	    device and have a daemon ship the data to a remote tape, but I
	    haven't had time to play with anything like that yet).

	2.  Lack of support for cartridge tapes. 

	    I can't seem to find any way to get sybase to exercise any kind
	    of tape control on a scsi cartridge tape device.  In fact, to
	    get sybase to write to the device at all, you have to tell it
	    that it's a disk!  That means I can't have a database any
	    larger than my largest tape device.  This also strikes me as
	    silly!  Do I really have to buy a 1/2" mag tape drive to dump
	    my database, when my exabyte would be so much more efficient?

	3.  More lack of support for cartridge tapes

	    This is related to #2.  I'm running on a Sun-4/470 with
	    all SCSI disks, under SunOS 4.1.1.  I have my exabyte set up
     	    as a disk byte stream device.  On about 1/2 of the dumps I do,
	    I get a "st?:  tape synchronisation lost" message from the OS
	    (where ? is replaced by the particular tape device).  I assume
            that sybase is doing (or not doing) something to the tape
            device to cause this, but I haven't got a clue what.  The tape
            drive works fine for normal dumps and tars.  Has anyone else
            seen this?  Barring a solution for #2, does anyone have any
            ideas that I could try?
	    

Any input will be appreciated.  Thanks,

Mark
-- 
cheeks@edsr.eds.com    or     ...uunet!edsr!cheeks