My boss nagged me into writing this after observing a number of exchanges between myself and one of my colleagues (Chris Brown) and several customers via email or web posts. Okay, okay – I was thinking about it anyhow – my boss just added some “gentle persuasion” to the argument. However, I cannot do the topic full justice in this space….I can only say that my colleague Chris Brown is wrapping up some tests for Linux which should prove interesting.

Thanks to ASE 15’s support of DIRECTIO, a common question we get asked these days “Which is better – raw devices or file systems with DIRECTIO?”

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In ASE 15.0.2, a feature called ‘Deferred Compilation’ was introduced to fix some classic issues around query optimization in ASE stored procedures.
Anything that makes life easier is appreciated, and Deferred Compilation is indeed a Good Thing. However, these’s a not-so-obvious aspect to it that you should know about, or you may find yourself banging your head against the wall — that’s what happened to me, at least, so I figure it may be useful to share my experience about this.
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I wanted to put out a quick note on a few things that are going on in the community over the next month. There are two great webcasts in July, the first

ASE 15 Migrate to Great Webcast
Thursday, July 23, 2009
10:00 am - 10:30am PT (1:00 pm - 1:30pm ET)
BJC Healthcare will share their experiences migrating to ASE 15 – how they did it, the lessons learned and benefits gained. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from real-life example what ASE 15 can do for your enterprise.
Is a look into a migration story from one of our healthcare customers.
This second webcast:

Database Virtualization Using Clusters: Cheaper, Easier, Faster, Better
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm ET (10 am - 11:00 am PT)
Carl Olofson, Research Vice President from IDC will give you a snapshot of the issues facing enterprises as they struggle to reduce both the cost and complexity of data centers, while dealing with continued business growth.

Combines some market research with a thought provoking view on where we are headed with Virtualization and Information Manangement.

And don’t forget that Techwave is coming to Washington, DC in late August.

With 15.0.1, ASE added confidentiality of data with its SSL implementation and server certificate validation in ctLib and JConnect clients. This covers the majority of use cases when a business feels the need to protect its data in movement. The real question I have for the user base out there is:

Does ASE need to have User Certificate Authentication?

With the advancement of our LDAP authentication mechanism in 15.0.3 to include SSL and failover connection management, there seems to be an evolution in our security strategy, but within Sybase, there are still no concrete plans to add this type of functionality.

What I talked about just last week with a customer was that they wanted the authentication to be on SSL, then the rest of the session on an open stream, due to the 40% bandwidth impact that SSL has on data packets. This also translates in to needing more than 40K more per client connection on the server, even if they only use SSL for authentication. These two issues usually make SSL a limited use technology in client server applications, which should be on protected switched networks anyway, so even sniffing data transmissions are difficult.

So, the point of this post is just to get some comments from those reading here about their needs, and uses, for SSL in ASE.

Thanks, and Have a SAFE and Happy 4th weekend (in the States).