Running more than one service at a time

Although you can use the Windows Service Manager in the Control Panel for some tasks, you cannot install or configure a MobiLink service from the Windows Service Manager. You can use Sybase Central to perform all the service management for MobiLink.

When you open the Windows Service Manager from the Windows Control Panel, a list of services appears. The names of the SQL Anywhere services are formed from the Service Name you provided when installing the service, prefixed by SQL Anywhere. All the installed services appear together in the list.

This section describes topics specific to running more than one service at a time.

Service dependencies

In some circumstances you may want to run more than one executable as a service, and these executables may depend on each other. For example, you must run the MobiLink server and the consolidated database server to synchronize.

Services must start in the correct order. If a MobiLink synchronization service starts before the consolidated database server has started, MobiLink fails because it cannot find the consolidated database server. The sequence must be such that the database server is running when you start the MobiLink server. (This does not apply if the consolidated database server is on another computer.)

You can prevent these problems using service groups, which you manage from Sybase Central.

Service groups

You can assign each service on your system to be a member of a service group. By default, each service belongs to a group. The default group for the MobiLink server is SQLANYMobiLink.

Before you can configure your services to ensure they start in the correct order, you must check that your service is a member of an appropriate group. You can check which group a service belongs to, and change this group, from Sybase Central.

To check and change which group a service belongs to

In Sybase Central, click MobiLink 12 in the left pane, and then open the Services tab in the right pane.
Right-click the service and choose Properties.
Click the Dependencies tab. The top text box displays the name of the group the service belongs to.
Click Change to display a list of available groups on your system.
Select one of the groups, or type a name for a new group.
Click OK to assign the service to that group.

Managing service dependencies

With Sybase Central, you can specify dependencies for a service. For example:

You can ensure that at least one group has started before the current service.
You can ensure that any service starts before the current service.

To add a service or group to a list of dependencies

In Sybase Central, click MobiLink 12 in the left pane, and then open the Services tab in the right pane.
Right-click the service and choose Properties.
Click the Dependencies tab.
Click Add Services or Add Service Groups to add a service or group to the list of dependencies.
Select one of the services or groups from the list.
Click OK to add the service or group to the list of dependencies.

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