For local connections, locating a server is simple. For connections over a network, you can use the CommLinks (LINKS) connection parameter to tune the search in many ways by supplying network protocol options.

You can specify a set of network protocol options for each network protocol in the argument to the CommLinks (LINKS) connection parameter.

Each attempt to locate a server involves two steps. First, SQL Anywhere looks in the server name cache to see if a server of that name is available (this step is skipped if the value of DoBroadcast is none). Second, it uses the available connection parameters to attempt a connection.

If the server is started automatically, information from the START, DBF, DBKEY, DBS, DBN, Server, and AutoStop connection parameters are used to construct the options for the automatically started server.

If the server has an alternate server name, you can only use the alternate server name to connect to the database that specified the alternate server name. You cannot use the alternate server name to connect to any other databases running on that database server. See -sn dbsrv12 database option.