FAQs – January 2009

9000 Class Errors

9000 class errors indicate an error within the Advantage Database Server. On the Windows platform the server will automatically generate a dump file which we can use to determine the cause of the problem. You can use the Advantage Support Capture tool to package the dump file, error logs and event logs to be sent to technical support.

If your server reports a 9000 class error do a quick search of the Knowledge Base. I was able to find articles for 9008, 9014, 9016, 9023, 9029, 9036, 9055, 9063, 9077 and 9084. Next you can review the list of fixes in the latest update. This includes version 8.1.0.38 and version 9.1.0.0 as of this writing. I would recommend subscribing to the Advantage Announcements RSS feed for the latest information on updates.

If these solutions do not help you can contact Advantage Technical Support about uploading the dump file. I would recommend using the Advantage Support Capture tool which will package up the error logs, event logs and dump files into a single archive which can be sent in.

Replication Requirements

Advantage replication was introduced in version 8.0 of Advantage Database Server. The server that will be replicating the data (publisher) sends changes to receiving server(s) (subscribers) in real time. All changes made at the publisher are queued in a replication log and sent to the subscribers whenever a connection can be established. A replication queue (table) is created for each subscriber.

To enable replication there is an additional cost but only for servers who will act as publishers. Subscribers must be Advantage Database Servers but require no additional fee beyond user licensing. However, subscribers may require additional user licenses since the publisher does count as one license on the subscriber.

Advantage ODBC in a 64bit Environment

Sybase iAnywhere does not currently ship a native 64bit ODBC driver for Advantage. However, the 32bit Advantage ODBC driver does work in a 64bit environment. 64bit versions of Windows ship with two separate ODBC managers, one for 64bit drivers and one for 32bit drivers. Unfortunately they are both called ODBCAD32.exe.

The 64bit ODBC Administrator is found in the Windows\System32 directory and the 32bit ODBC Administrator is located in the Windows\SystemWOWx64 directory. With Windows Vista an entry for both will appear in the start menu making it easier to distinguish between them. If your 32bit ODBC drivers do not appear in the list when you run the administrator verify that you are running the 32bit version.

Does Advantage Work with Distributed File System Technologies?

Distributed File System (DFS) technologies are included with Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008. DFS consists of two primary technologies Replication and Namespaces. DFS Replication copies files across multiple servers over LAN or WAN connections. DFS Namespaces allow administrators to group files and folders which may be located on separate physical servers together so they appear as a single folder tree to users. For more information on DFS use this link.

Advantage Database Server can access data stored in a DFS Namespace by using Server-Side Aliases. The Advantage Server cannot directly resolve a DFS namespace if it is passed in as the data path. By specifying a Server-Side Alias the DFS namespace will be resolved by the operating system and Advantage will be able to find the data. For more details see this knowledge base article.

At this time we do not recommend using DFS Replication on folders containing Advantage data. Enabling DFS Replication on Advantage data may cause unexpected errors or data corruption.