Your consolidated database holds system objects that are required by MobiLink. In most cases it also holds your application data, but you can hold all or part of your application data in other forms as well.

MobiLink supports consolidated databases for Windows and Linux on 32-bit and 64-bit environments. Your consolidated database can be one of the following ODBC-compliant RDBMSs:

• Adaptive Server Enterprise (no 64-bit Linux support provided)
• IBM DB2 LUW
• IBM DB2 mainframe
• Microsoft SQL Server
• MySQL
• Oracle
• SQL Anywhere

For version support information,  SQL Anywhere Supported Platforms and Engineering Status.

Your SQL Anywhere installation includes a setup script for each type of RDBMS. You need to run the appropriate setup script to use that RDBMS with MobiLink. The setup script adds tables and stored procedures that are required by MobiLink.

For information about setting up each type of database as a consolidated database, see Setting up a consolidated database.

For information about writing synchronization scripts for particular consolidated databases, see RDBMS-dependent synchronization scripts.

Synchronizing to other data sources

Your MobiLink environment must have a database that has been set up as a consolidated database. However, you can synchronize data sources other than the consolidated database. The other data sources can be almost anything: a text file, web service, non-relational database, spreadsheet, and so on. You can:

See Direct row handling.

Restrictions on modifying your consolidated database

Some users find it difficult to change the schema of their consolidated database. For these situations, MobiLink provides solutions, where possible, to keep changes to the consolidated database to a minimum. For example, MobiLink offers a variety of solutions for maintaining unique primary keys, some of which have minimal impact on the consolidated database schema.

In addition, you can avoid almost all impact on your consolidated database by putting your MobiLink system objects in a separate database. See MobiLink system database.