This is a very basic and very simplified explanation, I hope it will help you to start working with Sybase ASE easier.
ASE dataserver is an equivalent of Oracle instance. It consists of one or more OS processes. Starting form ASE 15.7 it will usually use a single OS process, which spawns many threads behind the scenes. You can connect to the dataserver using a host/port combination, the listener is built-in inside ASE, no dedicated OS process is required. The dataserver is also responsible for memory allocation.
The dataserver always contains a number of databases (master, sybsystemprocs, tempdb), which can be considered "system" databases and they are always present. You will create one or more user databases to store your data. The database is allocated on ASE devices, which are similar to Oracle datafiles and created by "disk init" command. Each database contains data (tables, indexes) and transaction log. In most of the cases, you will allocate data and log on different ASE devices. A database can allocate space for either data or log on multiple ASE devices.
To backup or restore a database (dump and load in ASE terminology), an additional process called backupserver is required. Backupserver is implemented as a separate OS process and may serve a number of ASE dataservers. You can perform a full database backup using "dump database" command, the dump is performed online and doesn't require any downtime. The full database restore is performed using "load database" command. Dump and load commands are executed on the dataserver.
In addition, you can dump and load transaction log of the database using "dump transaction" and "load transaction" respectively. This allows to perform the restore up to the last committed transaction, or point-in-time restore.
The next step should be reading the ASE documentation on the Infocenter, as already recommended by others.
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.