What are ALL the differences between the personal and network database servers?

[Breck_Carter]

Over time, the functionality of dbeng and dbsrv has been drifting apart. In Version 12, for example, the new dynamic multiprogramming level (-gn) tuning feature is disabled in the personal server.

That difference is NOT listed in the "Server differences" Help topic http://dcx.sybase.com/index.html#1200en/dbadmin/da-running.html

Are there any others?

This is an important question since a SQL Anywhere engine can be run in standalone mode (one or zero actual client connections) but can still have extreme performance requirements; e.g., many simultaneous internal connections from events and services, many batch-style queries, and so on. The choice between dbeng and dbsrv is NOT necessarily a choice between "personal" and "network"... not any longer, not with the feature drift.

...or is the answer, "Always run dbsrv unless you have a good reason to run dbeng"?

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Here's another difference, not performance-related: The default permissions required to stop the server using dbstop are different: dbeng -gk all versus dbsrv -gk DBA.

[VolkerBarth]

Added a "documentation" tag - hopes it makes sense for answers that help to complete the official docs.

[Breck_Carter]

I'm gonna leave tagging to other people... I keep coming up blank 🙂

[graeme_perrow · Accepted solution]

This is not (yet) an exhaustive list - I will add to it when needed.

Personal server

• unsupported on Windows Mobile
• no more than 10 simultaneous connections
• limited to single CPU
• the following features are not supported:
  • network communications
  • database mirroring
  • IP address monitoring My mistake - this is supported on both personal and network servers
  • communication packet compression
  • multiprogramming level tuning
  • registering the server with LDAP
• only supports shared memory connections by default. You must specify -x tcpip to allow TCP/IP connections (only true for v12+)
• gd server option defaults to all
• gk server option defaults to all
• gt server option defaults to 1
• CHECKPOINT statement is allowed by all users
• if the -su server switch is not specified, the utility_db has no password (any will work)
• the following server switches are unsupported:
  • gn (initial number of concurrent server requests)
  • gna (disable auto resizing of request task pool)
  • gnh (maximum number of concurrent server requests)
  • gnl (minimum number of concurrent server requests)
  • gns (display multiprogramming level statistics)
  • pc (compress communication packets)
  • pt (set compression threshold)
  • sm (alternate mirror server name)
  • sn (alternate server name)
  • wc enable/disable checksums on writes
  • xa (arbiter mirroring options)
  • xf (database mirror state file)
  • xm (IP address monitoring)
  • xp database mirroring options

Network server

• number of connections limited by your license
• number of CPUs depends on license
• gd server option defaults to DBA
• gk server option defaults to DBA
• gt server option defaults to number of licensed processors
• allows both shared memory and TCP/IP connections by default
• CHECKPOINT statement requires DBA authority
• if the -su server switch is not specified, there must be a util_db.ini file containing the utility_db password, otherwise the utility_db is not accessible

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

Please provide this great piece of information to the DCX team...

[graeme_perrow · Accepted solution]

I actually got it from the DCX team. They began putting this list together just a week or two ago.

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

@Graeme: Nice that you keep the list current!