Linking SAP ASE data sources: an overview

This topic describes basic concepts behind the creation of dSources from SAP ASE databases.

Initial linking and staging databases

A dSource is a copy of a physical database that is created when the Delphix Engine links to and loads the database from a backup. The database backup can be a new full database backup that the Delphix Engine initiates, the most recent existing database backup, or an existing database backup specified by the user. When loading from an existing backup, the backup should be in a location that the source environment user can access.

After obtaining the initial snapshot and linking the dSource, the Delphix Engine keeps the dSource and the source database in sync by monitoring the source database for new transaction log dumps and then applying those backups on a standby database. This database is called the "staging database." A target environment that hosts one or more staging databases is referred to as a "staging target."

After you have linked a database into the Delphix Engine, you can re-initialize it by performing a sync on the dSource.

There is an SAP ASE feature that affects the size of database dumps which correspondingly affect the amount of space consumed on the storage attached to the Delphix Engine. If the SAP ASE "sp_dumpoptimize" feature is set to maximum as follows, more disk space will be consumed on Delphix storage because SAP ASE writes both allocated and unallocated pages into the dump files: sp_dumpoptimize 'archivespace = maximum'.

SAP ASE source and staging database compatibility

You may use different SAP ASE patch level versions between source and staging hosts. The major version of SAP ASE must still be the same. The only caveat is for SAP ASE 15.7 - where the source and staging patch levels must both be either any version below SP64 or both be any version above SP100.