SQL Anywhere Server upgrades

Before using existing applications with this version of the software, be sure to review the list of behavior changes to determine whether your application is affected. See SQL Anywhere 16 - Changes and Upgrading.

Upgrading version 10 and later databases

If you are upgrading from version 10 or later, you can either upgrade and/or rebuild your database. Upgrading or rebuilding is an optional step because the version 16 software can be used with a version 10 or later database. However, to take advantage of all the new features in version 16, you must rebuild your database. See The upgrade process for version 10 and later databases and The rebuild process for version 10 and later databases.

Note

It is recommended that you refresh the materialized views in your database after upgrading your database server, or after rebuilding or upgrading your database to work with an upgraded database server. See Manually refreshing a materialized view.

Upgrading version 9 and earlier databases

If you are upgrading to version 16 from version 9 or earlier, you must rebuild the database, which consists of unloading the old database, and reloading it into a new version 16 database. Attempting to start version 9 or earlier databases results in an error on database startup. There are several approaches for rebuilding existing databases:

Use the version 16 Unload utility (dbunload) with the -an (create a new database) or -ar (replace the old database) option. See Rebuild a version 9 or earlier database using the Unload utility (command line).

Note

The Unload utility (dbunload) has the same file name in all versions of SQL Anywhere. Ensure that you are using the correct version. Run the command dbunload -? to determine which version of the Unload utility you are using. See How to ensure that you are running the correct version of the utilities when you have multiple versions installed.
Unload the database using the version 16 Unload utility, and then reload the database using the reload.sql file on the version 16 database server.

If you need to make schema changes, this is the recommended way of upgrading. After you make the schema changes, you can create a database, and then apply the reload script to it.
Use the Unload Database Wizard in Sybase Central. You can choose to create a new database, replace an existing database with the new database, or unload the database to a file. See Rebuild a version 9 or earlier database (Sybase Central).
Unload the database using an older version of dbunload, and then reload the database using the reload.sql file and the version 16 database server. Only use this approach if the other methods fail because deprecated or unsupported database option settings, objects, or SQL syntax could be unloaded into the reload.sql file. If problems occur during the reload, edit the file manually. The internal reload capabilities of version 16 take care of many of these problems.

Note

SQL Anywhere 9.0.2 for Mac OS X was supported on PPC, while SQL Anywhere 10 and later for Mac OS X are supported on Intel. If you have a version 9.0.2 or earlier database on Mac OS X, you have two options for unloading the database:

Unload the database using the version 9.0.2 software.
Copy the database to a different platform where SQL Anywhere 16 is installed, and then unload the database using the version 16 software.

Once the database is unloaded, you can perform the reload on Mac OS X using the version 16 software.

The procedure is more involved to change the characteristics of the database during unload and reload (for example, change a case-sensitive database to a case-insensitive database). See Database rebuilds.

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