SAP ASE text / image /binary data types in cross platform dump and load

[jmtorres]

Good Day,

In the process of dumping/loading database from ASE 15.7 on AIX to SAP ASE 16.0 on Linux RHEL , which are the recommended steps for dealing with these BLOB datatypes?

KBA 3031482 - Cross platform migration: handling of binary column - SAP ASE states :

>"So, no automatic conversion can be done during the cross-platform Dump/Load operation."

and docs "Restrictions for Dumping and Loading Databases and Transactions"

https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_ASE/3bdda6b0ffad441aab4fe51e4e876a19/a8a6bcb8bc2b1014ae38fff422f187b2....

> "SAP ASE cannot translate embedded data structures stored as binary, varbinary, or image columns."

So, this means that tables with these dataypes should be migrated manually(bcp)?

Thank you

Regards

Jose

[jmtorres]

Thank you Bret

So, we sholud expect that dump/load operation to convert these datatypes automatically .?( in this case big endian to little endian)

I asked because the docs & notes pointed are kind of confusing..(at least for me)

Regards

Jose

[jmtorres]

Thank you Bret

So, we sholud expect that dump/load operation to convert these datatypes automatically .?( in this case big endian to little endian)

I asked because the docs & notes pointed are kind of confusing..(at least for me)

Regards

Jose

[former_member188958]

Hi Jose,

No, usually dump and load is all you need.

The issue being discussed occurs when the migration is between big-endian and little-endian systems.

The byte order of various multi-byte datatypes (like smallint, int, timestamp) differ between

these systems, and ASE is able to reverse the bytes of these atomic types. The binary types

might be being used to store more complex data structures with multiple fields of data with

various datatpes, some of which should be reversed if they are to be treated as native data

on the new platform - but ASE doesn't know the boundaries of these fields in the complex

structure, so can't reverse the byte order of the field values. The client applications

likely aren't expecting any changes anyway.

-Bret