SybaseBlog

In a previous blog, I mentioned some of the key documents and tools that many Sybase ASE professionals would have available.

http://sybasease.blogspot.com/2005/07/sybase-survival-pack.html

In this post, I am going to expand on this somewhat and talk about where you can go to find the solutions to your Sybase ASE problems.

Understandably, the very first place you should look is with Sybase's Documentation. Here are the three key links:

1. Search Sybase's Documentation using Sybooks
http://sybooks.sybase.com/

2. Alternatively, this link will take you directly to a page where you can view (or download) the manuals on-line.
http://sybooks.sybase.com/asg1250e.html

3. Sybase TechDoc searches through whitepapers, articles, release notes and bulletins.
http://www.sybase.com/support/techdocs/

If you can't find what you want in Sybase's documentation, chances are you are not alone. If so, you should see if someone has already solved your problem or answered your question before. There is a good Sybase FAQ maintained by ISUG:

Sybase FAQ from ISUG
http://www.isug.com/Sybase_FAQ/ASE/index.html
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/databases/sybase-faq/

Beyond that, you can search some private web sites for articles on the same topic. Here are my four favourite links, which you should also see on my list of links:

1. Rob Verschoor's site is probably the best. Tips, tricks, articles, lots of great stuff.
http://www.sypron.nl/

2. Todd Boss has some GREAT articles, a wealth of technical info, and lots of useful scripts.
http://www.bossconsulting.com/sybase_dba/

3. Ed Barlow hasn't updated his site for awhile, but he has a good vault of information. This link goes directly to that vault.
http://www.edbarlow.com/documents.htm

4. Michael Peppler's is the best site for SybPerl (Perl library for Sybase). Not surprising since he's the author of SybPerl.
http://www.peppler.org/~mpeppler/

If you can't find what you're looking for anywhere, then you can ask for help. While there are others, here are the two newsgroups I recommend:

sybase.public.ase.general
comp.databases.sybase

These newsgroups are relatively low-traffic, but there are still a fair number of people that will read the articles, including the experts in TeamSybase. So you may have to wait awhile to get a response. Obviously, you should search the forums first to see if your question has already come up. Use TeamSybase's tool to search the sybase forums:

http://www.teamsybase.com/ngsform.html

If your question is not quick, concise and clear, you may not get a response at all. Try to narrow down your problem to make it quick and easy for someone to help you.

I don't have any book recommendations, partly because you aren't going to do much better than the Sybase manuals. I really recommend you read some of them. But the two books I use most often are Sybase Unleashed, and Rob Verschoor's Quick Reference Guide.