ASE 16: When and what major features?

[Former Member]

Are we looking at 2014 for the GA release of ASE 16.0?  What are the major features that we can expect in the release?

[sap_mk · Accepted solution]

Jason,

ASE 16.0 is planned / targeted for ~Q2 2014. The feature list is not yet available for external posting. We will be conducting a closed beta in a couple months and I would expect a "new feature" list to be available late this year.

Mark

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Very good news!

I deeply hope that the "compatibility mode" feature will be kept in ASE16.0 to help ASE customers to migrate smoothly to the re-written ASE15 optimizer...a such long task to achieve...

Vincent

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Mark!  That is good news

I'm hoping that one of the features is the dbcc command:   dbcc winning_lottery_ticket_number

[sap_mk · Accepted solution]

Jason, that has been around for a while, but it's undocumented.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Guys,

dbcc winning_lottery_ticket_numer? Cool!

Probably an extended SP, accessing a Java application, that will text your purchase of the winning ticket to your local vendor right? LOL. Please, implement it ASAP. I really need it!

Regards,

Jean-Pierre

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I´ll think they will implement: dbcc struck_by_lightning first. More chance than: dbcc winning_lottery_ticket_number!

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

lol   I think that was already done with SCC 😉

[former_member182090 · Accepted solution]

We are actually working on "dbcc magic_happens_now". Stay tuned for that....

[former_member185199 · Accepted solution]

i dont wanna know the ticketnumber because for sure it´s sold out already

i´ll take the magic_happens_now

[kevin_sherlock · Accepted solution]

@Mark Kusma writes on 9/26/1013- "I would expect a "new feature" list to be available late this year."

Mark.  Given we are past late last year, and well into early this year, what is your take on SAP posting ASE 16 features?  Or, is that being reserved exclusively for the ISUG-TECH conference?

[Former Member]

Jason, Mark,

Nice to hear from you! Hey, will it be available in 32bit... Perhaps, a sneak peak beta downloadable version?

Best wishes for 2014.

Jean-PIerre

[TerryOrsborn]

Stay tuned for the details on SAP ASE 16!  Yes, this is a major release.  One of the very first ways to hear more about the new version is to attend the ISUG-TECH conference, the week of April 14th in Atlanta.

Check out the blog and then the SAP ASE 16 sessions on the ISUG-TECH website (link in the blog).  New SAP ASE 16 session are currently being added.

http://scn.sap.com/community/ase-custom-applications/blog/2014/02/20/new-sap-data-management-technic...

[kevin_sherlock]

So, if I read this correctly, free/public ASE 16.x release information won't be available until after the conference 4/17/2014.  As much as I'd like to go to the conference (and believe me, it looks very much like one i'd like to go to), I can't find $2k burning a hole in my pocket

[TerryOrsborn]

Kevin, Keep a look out for SAP ASE 16 information at the beginning part of April.  BTW- I know you need to add a flight to the cost for the conference, however the cost for the conference is $995 including 3 nights hotel (early bird special ending Friday, February 28th).

[Former Member]

All details now freely available at the following location.

http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index.jsp?docset=/com.sybase.infocenter.help.ase.16.0/doc/html/tit...

Most interesting feature? CIS to HANA.  This paves the way to easier migrations to HANA from ASE - via a heterogeneous environment.

[kevin_sherlock]

My votes for most interesting:

1.  create or replace functionality

2.  multiple triggers

3.  Monitoring threshold based events

4.  configuration tracking history

5.  partition level locking

6.  log space usage tracking

7.  CIS to HANA

Even with these, it seems a somewhat underwhelming list to merit a new major release number.

[Former Member]

Indeed.  15.7.2 is close to topping it.

[Former Member]

Full database encryption looks like a major feature to me, which should come in handy, but I'm otherwise underwhelmed as well. I wonder how much of a speed penalty is involved with the full database encryption.

[former_member182259]

Hidden undert the covers of ASE 16 is a lot of rewrites to spinlock areas of code - so, while you are seeing what looks to be a scattering of features, the main work was done in scaling and eliminating contention - both on high core counts as well as lower core counts - the later especially with proc cache and ELC configuration - as well as log semaphore contention and eliminating the problem of buffer unpinning.   Some of these changes required linking in machine code - which means only supporting current releases of certain platforms/OS's - which by itself often dictates a new platform number.  However, there are a number of new features - if you read the NFG, you can see a laundry list - one of which may or may not be mentioned there is HADR mode - which more tightly integrates ASE & SRS - not only is there a synchronous RepAgent (requires an new SRS SP to be launched later), standby ASE is readonly for normal users (ASE actually detects it is standby - and unless you are a privileged user such as RS maint or sa_role, writes are blocked), but ASE also now supports client failover from primary to standby ASE without OpenSwitch - in short term, available for Business Suite - later this year (perhaps) custom apps.

However, with regard to Full Database Encryption.....from a data security standpoint, you can think of it as filling a gap between column level encryption and standard MAC/DAC controls - especially with predicated permissions in the mix.   Remember, in column level encryption, we decrypted data at the materialization stage (and encrypted it in normalization) which meant that the data was encrypted both in memory as well as on disk.   This was important, because, when you have database users with different access requirements - and especially if you want to keep DBA's from seeing the data, you need to encrypt the data in memory as well as on disk - and with different users/different requirements, you also need to be able to encrypt different columns with different keys.  As a result of encryption, some common database performance techniques - such as leaf/range scans on encrypted cols - were penalized as the index was sorted by the encrypted value (otherwise, it would be security hole) - and no real secure encryption techniques exist that would preserve the lexigraphical sequence.   As a result, often times a different index was used for the query or if that index was selected, it was a full leaf scan followed by decryption & sorting - quite a bit of overhead compared to the unencrypted leaf scan.   Of course, Encrypted Columns took a bit of effort to set up as someone had to go through and identify every column of sensitive data, determine which Column Encryption Key to use and who should have access - some planning.

Encrypted Columns = data at rest and in memory fully encrypted - and only select designated users could see the data - others saw a default literal value.

Full Database Encryption is intended to solve the problem of ensuring the data at rest is encrypted, but sort of assumes that all legitimate users of the database have the same access rights to the data.  Since all users have the same access rights, there is no need to encrypt in memory, use different keys for different columns, etc.  As a result, the encryption happens just prior to being written to disk - or just after being read from disk - and on a page basis vs. individual column basis.  As a result, index key values, etc. are in their normal sorted order - meaning there is no penalty for leaf scans/range scans any more.  Yes, the PIOs may take a slight bit longer but I would be willing to wager we could encrypt the data far faster than traditional disk-based storage can either write it to disk or read it from disk.  The time aspect may be very very slightly noticeable on large physical read driven queries.  Of course, encryption does use CPU - that might be more noticeable - depending on how much physical IO you are doing.   However, since most apps operate on 95%+ cache hit rates, it might not be that noticeable.   Remember as well, for write intensive apps, it is often not your SPID doing the writes - it is the HK Wash, checkpoint, someone else pushing your page through wash marker, etc.  Keep in mind that one of the drivers for this was SAP ERP applications - where performance is extremely critical due to the way the applications tend to operate (a lot of client side joins to avoid temp tables due to vendor incompatibilities with respect to tempdb).   As a result, performance was a key consideration.  Level of effort for implemenation is minimal - set up your keys and encrypt the database.  Voila!

Full Database Encryption = data at rest fully encrypted - all legitimate users have access.

Hopefully, this not only addresses the speed question, but also the differences.

[Former Member]

Would not this also be a consequence of that some software Development projects
moved a away from the Waterfall methodology ?

The Linux Kernel change major number not long ago and I
could not see a single big feature.

Niclas

[Former Member]

if you remember, Linus released 3.0 largely because he was tired of people asking him when 3.0 was coming out.

[former_member182192]

Hi Kevin,

The ASE 16.0 release, is the foundation that puts us on our new path and direction to what the market requires from the next generation eXtreme OLTP engines.

Subsequent releases based on ASE 16 will build new capabilities as outlined in our roadmap on SMP. The key pillars for the ASE 16 release  are  processing eXtreme transactions at Scale, Simplicity Security and Speed.

To get an insight into our exciting innovations, I would recommend that you attend  ISUG-Tech, where we will have database thought leaders and ASE experts explaining our roadmaps and intentions, and diving into deeper details.

For addtional information  please refer to :-

• For ISUG-TECH ISUG-TECH : ISUG-TECH Conference, 2014 : Conference Information
• Roadmap's on Service Market Place - (S-USER Required)  http://service.sap.com/saproadmaps
  

We will also be at the RedHat Summit with some exciting announcement - Red Hat Summit

We look forward to seeing you at these events.

[former_member222465]

To add to some of the earlier comments - ASE 16 has a number of features, in the area of scale up, managing large data sets, ease of use and HA/DR for Business Suite. 

In order to ensure that ASE is positioned for the future, significant focus was put in ensuring that ASE scales up with increasing core counts.  This required optimization within ASE in the locking/latching algorithms, buffer management, etc. to ensure that concurrent access to internal data structures can be done with minimal or no blocking. Internal benchmarks (OLTP) show scalability on an 80 core machine, with more than 1 million transactions per minute.

In addition to scalability, our focus was also adding capabilities in the area of security/auditing, HANA integration, ease of use and storage optimization. Some of the key features in these areas include:

• Increased Data Availability with Partition Locking
• Index compression
• Full text auditing; Secure Wipe and supporting create/replace for database objects
• The CIS enhancements allow HANA data to be processed within ASE, with query push down from ASE to HANA. 
• SCC has also been an area of emphasis for us, with features supporting compression advisor, backup scheduling, etc.

You can consider ASE 16 as the foundational release for upcoming releases to follow soon: supporting high transaction environments, where latency and throughput are critical. Here the focus is on in-memory processing, and taking advantage of memory and data tiering with flash, which will become more integrated with in-memory processing.  Technologies like capture and replay will enable ASE users to easily replay production workloads across machines, or versions, making migrations easier. We are also evaluating heat map technology, which will allow users to optimally make use of storage, keeping frequently accessed data on faster devices, and archiving infrequently used data. Security and auditing will continue to be important, and providing more granular auditing and data masking (to allow sensitive data to be masked and shared in an organization), will be areas of focus.

In the next few weeks, we will be updating our official roadmap, which will provide more details on the features in the upcoming releases of ASE.

Ashok Swaminathan, ASE Product Management

[kevin_sherlock]

Thanks for the added detail.  This is the kind of stuff that doesn't come through on the NFG summaries and descriptions.  Looking forward to the "capture and replay" functionality especially.

[former_member182259]

Kevin -

If you notice in Ashok's email, he stated "....for upcoming releases to follow soon:..", so the capture/replay and in-memory enhancements are not in the 16.0GA release.   What is in the 16.0GA release is pretty much just what is covered in the NFG....although I have started using the New Feature Summary more as with all the changes in the ESD/SP's, there is a lot there.

One thought to also keep in mind (for everyone)....if a company decides to take a path of continuous innovation - you will likely see a smattering of new features/functionality released over time vs. huge major releases every 3-4 years.   So, while SY was more of a "major release" style company, SAP is more of "continuous innovation" style...

[kevin_sherlock]

Jeff.  I understood about the capture/replay for "upcoming" release past 16.0GA.  As I said, looking "forward" to it.  I would also point out that the NFG doesn't really convey what you and others have generously described above regarding internal changes around more efficient spinlock processing, etc. (other than the obvious "feature" changes).

Just reflecting on the more recent major releases (especially the earth-moving 12.x -> 15.x), yes, the "continuous innovation" style seems to be a paradigm shift for those of us who have been looking on for so many years . 

[former_member182259]

Sorry then      I couldn't tell - and didn't want you or someone reading your post getting confused with the ref to NFG and a feature that we didn't have yet.   The spinlock processing is in the NFG, mostly under 'Scalability Enhancements....'    Also, Stefan K is working on a whitepaper that will provide the gory details - which should be available about launch timeframe (mid April).   Remember too, that (unfortuately IMHO) the NFG simply introduces the new feature, syntaxes and what it does - any real detailed information will likely be in the appropriate updated manual.   Of course, for spinlocks....hmmm...hence the whitepaper.

[Former Member]

(Obviously I do not speak for Sybase or SAP,  any Sybase employee's post would override mine.)

As far as I am concerned, on the basis of:

• My ERs of Apr 2009, features which were promised for [then labelled] ASE 16
• Expected features, as per various posts over the five year period

given the content of ASE 15.7 SP100, on the basis of the New Features Guide (154 pages, and it does not include previous release info as the NFs normally do)

          ASE 15.7 SP100  is  ASE 16

Therefore ASE 16 has been delivered.

Unfortunately without any announcement.

• Sybase has a long history of changing the name of versions, both internally and externally.  I presume that for some reason (eg. under SAP), a major new release, with the attendant announcements and media circus, was not possible ... or for strategic reasons, they wanted ASE 16 to look like a minor release under SAP.  It isn't.  In the ASE context, it is a major release, with a large number of new features and improvements.

This release should not be kept secret.  Fair enough, for any major new release, one should not implement the GA, one should wait for the first large ESD (now SP).  Maybe they are going to announce it when that is available.

I would say, the New Features Guide is essential reading.

Regards

Derek

[Former Member]

Hi Jason,

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-40057

http://scn.sap.com/community/sybase-sql-anywhere/blog/2013/03/06/coming-soon-sql-anywhere-16-data-sy...

[Former Member]

Thanks Srinivasan,

It saves me from asking the same question on the SQL Anywhere forum   

Mark is correct, in this particular post, I'm asking about ASE 16.0.

jason