Number of cores supported in SQL Anywhere 17 Workgroup edition?

[former_SQLA_member1694871]

I'm attempting to look through a mountain of documentation trying to get my head wrapped around what the correct license model is to go after. We have an internal product that runs a small amount of users against a database in one office. We also have some machines running standalone databases that run replication against this database.

Now I'm reading about all the changes SAP made to the licensing model for SQL Anywhere. And how SQL Anywhere 17 new license model (one of them) is based on the number of cores. And you purchase the core license model based on the number of cores you have on your server.

This is ours...

Intel Xeon Processor e5-2609

This has four cores. So my immediate thought is we need to purchase a 4 core license. However, with the fact that this is NOT a database that is being hit by 100 users, I'm thinking... Do I really need that? Can I go workgroup edition? Which leads to my next question. How many cores does the workgroup edition take advantage of? I've read small blurbs that workgroup STILL takes advantage of 4 or 8 cores? Is that the case? Or is it 1?

And if it's 1? Why not just buy a one core version of SQL Anywhere 17 Core? Or can it even be installed this way?

Sybase did an amazing job explaining the technology. Now I can't seem to find any in depth discussions of what the core vs the workgroup licensing really means.

In an environment that has less that 10 users in the office at a time hitting the production database (PowerBuilder application hitting SQL Anywhere on the network), what's my best option for our budget? I don't mind spending money on the core version, but I can't see spending over $4,000 to handle 4 cores. I could see purchasing one or two cores, if SQL Anywhere can be installed in a way where it just takes advantage of the number of cores you're licensed for?

Can somebody give me a short education on what I'm looking at here? If workgroup is enough, I'll go workgroup, and just add any additional users I might need for replication individually. But if I can purchase say a two core version of SQL Anywhere that has unlimited users hitting the production database, I don't mind doing that either. 4 core however basically destroys our budget.

If anybody has anything they can pass my way to clear this up, I would appreciate it. Immensely!

TIA!

Jeff Gibson
Intercept Solutions
Nashville, TN

[VolkerBarth]

Here's a further FAQ that may or may not give more information. I certainly agree that the situation is not well documented. E.g. it does not really tell what the meaning of a "Named user" is for the alternate licensing model within then SAP Store...

[reimer_pods]

"And you purchase the core license model based on the number of cores you have on your server."
IMHO you just have to buy the number of core licenses matching the number of cores you want the engine to use.
It could be possible to check that by downloading the SA 17 Developer versionen and using DBLIC to restrict it to a number of cores, e.g. 1, and try that (dblic -l core -u 1 dbsrv17.lic)
But you should really only bother with core licenses if the user count exceeds the "break even point", from where on core licenses cost less then the number of additional seat licences you would need.