If your database has become unusable, you have experienced a database failure. SQL Anywhere provides protection against the following categories of failure:

Media failure   The database file and/or the transaction log become unusable. This may occur because the file system or the device storing the database file becomes unusable, or it may be because of file corruption.

For example:

Backups protect your data against media failure.

See Understanding backups.

System failure   A system failure occurs when the computer or operating system goes down while there are partially completed transactions. This could occur when the computer is inappropriately turned off or restarted, when another application causes the operating system to crash, or because of a power failure.

For example:

After a system failure occurs, the database server recovers automatically when you next start the database. The results of each transaction committed before the system error are intact. All changes by transactions that were not committed before the system failure are canceled.

See Backup and recovery internals.

It is possible to recover uncommitted changes manually. See Recovering uncommitted operations.