SQL Anywhere software may create temporary files for various operations, including a temporary file that is created when the
database server starts and erased when the database server stops. As its name suggests, the temporary file is used to hold
temporary information while the database server is running. The temporary file does not hold information that needs to be
kept between sessions.
Temporary files are held in the directory specified by one of the TMP, TMPDIR, or TEMP environment variables. If more than
one of these environment variables is specified, then the first of TMP, TMPDIR, and TEMP is used. You can also set the SATMP
environment variable to specify the location of temporary files used by the database server and the SQL Anywhere command line
utilities that require a temporary directory.
The location of the temporary file that is used by the database server can be specified when starting the database server
using the -dt server option. If you do not specify a location for the temporary file when starting the database server, SQL
Anywhere checks the following environment variables, in order: SATMP TMP TMPDIR TEMP. If an environment variable is not defined,
SQL Anywhere places its temporary file in the current directory for Windows, and in the /tmp directory for Unix.
On Unix, the temporary directory is used to establish a shared memory connection. On Windows Mobile, you can use the registry
to specify which directory to use as the server's temporary directory. For more information about setting the temporary directory
value, see Registry settings on Windows Mobile.
Note
Using shared memory connections on Unix with older software
In SQL Anywhere version 9 and earlier, the environment variable ASTMP is equivalent to SATMP. If you are using shared
memory to connect version 9 and version 12 software, you must set the SATMP and ASTMP environment variables to specify the
location of the temporary file.