New Adaptive Server Kernel
Adaptive Server version 15.7 and later includes two kernels: a threaded kernel and a process kernel.
Compressing Data in Adaptive Server
Adaptive Server version 15.7 introduces data compression, which lets you use less storage space for the same amount of data, reduce cache memory consumption, and improve performance because of lower I/O demands.
New Security Features
Adaptive Server version 15.7 adds these features for security: end-to-end CIS Kerberos authentication, dual control of encryption keys and unattended startup, securing logins, roles and password management extensions, and login profiles.
Abstract Plans in Cached Statements
Adaptive Server version 15.7 introduces the ability to save abstract plan information in the statement cache.
Shrink Log Space
In Adaptive Server version 15.7 and later, alter database includes the log off parameter, which removes unwanted portions of a database log, allowing you to shrink log space and free storage without re-creating the database.
Changes for Large Objects
Adaptive Server version 15.7 includes changes for large objects (LOBs), such as storing in-row LOB columns for small text, image, and unitext datatypes, storing declared SQL statements containing LOBs, indirectly referencing a LOB in Transact-SQL statements, and allowing checking for null values of large objects.
Showing Cached Plans in XML
The show_cached_plan_in_xml function returns a showplan output in XML for a statement in cache.
Padding a Character Field Using str
In Adaptive Server version 15.7 the decimal parameter of the str function has been extended to allow a field to be padded with a specified character or numeric.
Changes to select for update
Adaptive Server version 15.7 supports select for update to exclusively lock rows for subsequent updates within the same transaction, and for updatable cursors. This prevents other concurrent tasks from updating these rows and from blocking the subsequent update. select for update is supported at isolation levels 1, 2, and 3.
Sharing Inline Defaults
Adaptive Server 15.7 supports sharing inline defaults between different tables if the tables are in the same database.
Retain Monitoring Data
Adaptive Server version 15.7 does not store the descriptors for some objects in the metadata cache. Instead, it retains monitoring data stored in the descriptors, thus improving query performance.
Analyze Dynamic Parameters
Adaptive Server version 15.7 allows you to analyze dynamic parameters (which are indicated by question marks) before running a query, helping you avoid inefficient query plans.
Monitor Lock Timeouts
Adaptive Server version 15.7 allows you to monitor lock timeouts.
Truncate Trailing Zeros
Adaptive Server version 15.7 includes the disable varbinary truncation configuration parameter, which enables or disables the truncation of trailing zeros from varbinary and binary null data.
Fully Recoverable DDL
Adaptive Server version 15.7 allows you to use dump transaction to fully recover the operations that earlier versions of Adaptive Server minimally logged.
View Statistics and Histograms with sp_showoptstats
sp_showoptstats allows you to extract and display, in an XML document, statistics and histograms for various types of data objects from system tables such as systabstats and sysstatistics.
Changes to Cursors
Adaptive Server version 15.7 includes changes to cursor locks, how cursors manage transactions, and how it declares cursor statements.
Expanded Variable-Length Rows
Adaptive Server version 15.7 redefines data-only locked (DOL) columns to use a row offset of up to 32767 bytes. You must configure Adaptive Server for a logical page size of 16K to create wide, variable-length DOL rows.
Changes to like Pattern Matching
Adaptive Server version 15.7 allows you to treat square brackets individually in the like pattern-matching algorithm.
Changes to Quoted Identifiers
In Adaptive Server 15.7 and later, you can use quoted identifiers for tables, views, column names, index names, and system procedure parameters.
Allowing Unicode Noncharacters
In Adaptive Server version 15.7, the enable permissive unicode configuration parameter, which is a member of enable functionality group, allows you to ignore Unicode noncharacters.
Reduce Query Processing Latency
The query processing layer in Adaptive Server 15.7 enables multiple client connections to reuse or share dynamic SQL lightweight procedures (LWPs).
The sybdiag Utility
Adaptive Server 15.7 adds the sybdiag utility, a Java-based tool that collects comprehensive Adaptive Server configuration and environment data. Sybase Technical Support uses this information to diagnose server issues, thus expediting customer cases.
The Optimizer Diagnostic Utility
Adaptive Server version 15.7 includes the sp_opt_querystats system procedure, which allows you to analyze the query plan generated by the Adaptive Server optimizer and the factors that influenced its choice of a query plan.
Created August 1, 2012. Send feedback on this help topic to Sybase Technical Publications:
pubs@sybase.com