Support for synchronization over TCP in Android clients

[Former Member]

The current release of SQL Anywhere 12 only supports synchronization over HTTP or HTTPS in Android clients. For Windows Mobile and iOS clients there's also the option of synchronization over TCP. Is there any plans to make this option available for Android??

[philippefbertrand · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the suggestion. UltraLite for Android is based on the UltraLiteJ API which was originally designed for J2ME and BlackBerry smartphones. These platforms had very poor TCP support (in many cases it was due to restrictions imposed by many carriers) therefore it was felt that HTTP and HTTPS would suffice. Things have changed in the last few years so perhaps it is time to revisit this.

I will forward your suggestion to product management. It would help if you could provide a business case for it. You can email me at myfirstname.mylastname at sybase.com.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Philippe, thanks for the answer.

The general business case for our use of TCP instead of HTTP has to do with better sync performance altogether. According to our measures (using an iPhone and synchronizing with both protocols), synchronizing with TCP is between 25% to 50% faster than with HTTP. On a typical business application that uses background sync to maintain the application data updated, we can have to perform several syncs throughout the day, so it's better for us if the each synchronization can be as fast as possible. The main impact for us is related to user experience, since locks in the database during sync may generate waiting time for the user. Also, there may be a positive impact on device battery life if we can reduce the total time spent on syncs.