Will EBFs no longer be free after June 30?

[Breck_Carter]

The following notice has appeared on the EBF download page; what exactly does it mean?

Please Note With the transition to SAP support plans and infrastructure you will lose access to the Sybase EBF and Maintenance download site. SAP Service Marketplace does NOT contain patches for older End of Lifed product versions. Should you wish to retain copies of such patches for future use we strongly encourage you to download copies BEFORE you are migrated to SAP support plans and infrastructure. The Sybase EBF and Maintenance download site will be decommissioned at the end of June 2014 after which time no further access will be possible to download such patches.

On the SAP infrastructure only users that have a valid Support Agreement are able to download patches.

[VolkerBarth]

Hm, that sounds like the "castle walls" Bill has talked about here... - sigh.

[MCMartin]

Any hint, where in the marketplace one will find the new EBFs?

[Former Member]

It means that you will have to have a valid support agreement in place in order to have access to the ebf/SP downloads after June 30, and the downloads will be moving to the SAP Service Marketplace. The current Sybase download site will no longer be available after this date.

While for most products only active versions will be available for download, for SQL Anywhere we have been able to also provide versions 9.0.2 and 11.0.1, as well as the currently active versions 12.0.1 and 16 onto service marketplace for download. However, I would still recommend you download anything you need from the current ebf pages before the deadline to ensure you have what you need.

On the SAP Service Marketplace site, if you click the "Software Downloads" link under the "Products" menu, you can navigate through to the SQL Anywhere downloads and patches via the A-Z index or a search.

edit: Also, please note that the purchase of the support/maintenance plan for SQL Anywhere also entitles you to upgrades to new versions of the software as well.

[VolkerBarth]

While for most products only ... for SQL Anywhere we have been able to also provide...

That seems to be your new sports, methinks, fighting windmills walls...

[Breck_Carter]

I assume the answer to the question "Will EBFs no longer be free after June 30?" is "yes, that is correct."

The SAP Service Marketplace requires registration, and that requires a "Customer or Installation Number"... is that available to the holder of a Developers Edition licence? Educational Edition?

The latter may be a moot point since the Educational Edition seems to have been withdrawn.

[Former Member]

Yes, ebfs will no longer be free. You get a customer/installation number as part of your purchase of SQL Anywhere.

[Breck_Carter]

But not the Developers or Educational editions?

So no EBFs for developers or students?

[Breck_Carter]

Oops, never mind. The Education Edition page doesn't work at all, neither does the 11.0.1 Developers Edition, the 12.0.1 Developers Edition redirects to the "trial edition" which bounces to the 16.0 Developers Edition which... crashes when you fill in the form... NewSQL anyone? 🙂

[Breck_Carter]

store.sap.com doesn't work either...

[Former Member]

I just filled out the v12 dev. edition form and everything worked fine. Here is the link I used (which I got from a google search)

https://global.sap.com/campaign/ne/sybase/sql_anywhere_12_developer_edition/index.epx?url_id=text-na...

Can you post your starting link?

I will look into what is going on with the educational edition. The download registration page works from IE but not Chrome.

[Breck_Carter]

I started here http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1016644

It took me here http://www.sap.com/pc/tech/database/software/sybase-sql-anywhere/index.html

Which took me here https://global.sap.com/campaign/ne/sybase/sql_anywhere_16_download_program/index.epx?kNtBzmUK9zU

Which took me to... splat!

I broke two rules: Don't expect sap.com to be stable! and Don't expect sap.com to work on chrome! 🙂

[VolkerBarth]

IMHO, Breck's urgent question is still open:

No EBFs for developers or students?

I guess most active users of this forum will have valid support plans, so they might not be affected. However, it would be a drawback if the - apparently still available - free developer edition would not be allowed for free EBFs - particularly as the free Web Edition has been discontinued for v16.

[Former Member]

No, downloading the developer or educational edition will not grant you access to bug fixes. However, I expect we will update the the downloads for these editions regularly.

[VolkerBarth]

Sad. That's certainly a remarkable change in the EBF "politics". I would think that - as one has to register for a developer edition - the according key should allow to get access to EBFs, too, so the EBF download would still be not totally anonymous.

However, it's presumably not a change introduced by the iAnyhwere staff, so we'll have to cope with that...

[MikePaola]

Breck - I was under the impression that the former Team Sybase members did get S-IDs (the required customer/install # for access to SMP). If not, let me look into why that didn't happen for you and try to rectify that.

Also, to add to Jason's comments, being on an SAP support plan not only gets you access to SPs (or EBFs as we used to call them) but it also gets you access to new major releases.