When version 15.0.3 ESD#1 of ASE was released in March 2009, migrating to ASE 15 instantly became easier. This is due to a new feature named “Compatibility Mode” that was part of this ASE release.
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Recently I have seen a number of questions on the newsgroups about filtering rows for users. This is a feature called Row Level Access Control within Sybase ASE. There are five steps to implementing it, which i will cover briefly. The majority of this content is from my Techwave 2008 Presentation that was well received by those in the room.

So, the list of steps:

1. Enable get_appcontext
2. Create an Access Control Table
3. Create an access rule for column and bind it
4. Create a Stored Procedure to assign application context to the current user
5. Enable the procedure as a login trigger for user or global use

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Some of you probably recieved a survey from me back in April.    If your reaction is anything like mine, you probably said, “What do they want to know now?  Don’t they know this stuff already . . .”   There was a good reason.    While I get the opportunity to talk to a lot of customers in person and by telephone, it’s hard for me to really reach out to hundreds of you.   Some of the more cynical respondents might have even thought, “Oh great, they’re looking for something new to sell me in these tough times.”   I assure you that was not the intent of our survey.   This survey, along with dozens of telephone interviews, was part of my data gathering process to know what we need to do to make ASE better in the long haul, both in terms of technology and product ecosystem.   Your specific responses correlated with your name and personal information were only seen by myself and the market communications team that ran the mechanics of the survey for me.    I personnaly then took your input and aggregated with the responses from other customers like yourselves.    Your individual responses will stay with the strategy and will not ultimately become a solicitation based solely on the survey.

So what do we do with all the data we gathered?   Well, for one thing I read every single response to every single question.   I place special emphasis on the areas where your shared your dissatisfactions with the current product and what you hoped to see in the future product.  I then categorized and attempt to add your individual voices together to support common themes that will be shared with the product managers, key architects, and engineers.  With your voices composed together into aggregate information of the survey, I can then speak with authority to key decision makers at Sybase at where we need to make investments to serve you better.

As an aside, a brief apology to those who received duplicate surveys in error or not in your preferred language.   The tool we use, while very efficient for gathering large amounts of input and putting them into a form that makes it possible for me to personally review thousands of responses, has its limitations.   If you ever feel, you’ve received a survey or communication in error, you can use the contact link at the bottom of the survey to send us a response.   Be assured that each response is read and processed here.

Your input is much appreciated and it will be utilized in the products future developement.

I had the privilege of attending this year’s NY Customer Advisory Board meeting for Replication Server. Typically, these are held at TechWave and with everything else going on around then, it is tough to get to them…so it was definitely a benefit to get to it this year. Equally unfortunately, with TechWave going global this year, not all the CAB members are conveniently in one place – so the CAB meeting I was at was only attended by those in New York. Bill Zhang (Replication Server Product Manager) will no doubt be getting the input from the others. Some of the key points of discussion were:
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