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SAP Open Client provides customer applications, third-party products, and other SAP products with the interfaces needed to communicate with Open Servers.
You can develop applications in C or C++, and then connect those applications to an Open Server using the Open Client API.
The SQL Anywhere database server can act as an Open Server to Open Client applications. This feature enables SAP Open Client applications to connect natively to SQL Anywhere databases.
Consider using the Open Client interface if you are concerned with SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise compatibility or if you are using other SAP products that support the Open Client interface.
Because the database server can act as an Open Server, SAP Enterprise Connect Data Access (ECDA) is supported.
Enterprise Connect Data Access provides a unified view of disparate data within an organization, allowing users to access multiple data sources without having to know what the data looks like or where to find it. In addition, ECDA performs heterogeneous joins of data across the enterprise, enabling cross-platform table joins of targets such as SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, SAP IQ, SAP SQL Anywhere, IBM DB2, IBM VSAM, and Oracle.
If you simply want to use an existing Open Client application with the database server, you do not need to know any details of SAP Open Client and Open Server. However, an understanding of how these components fit together may be helpful for configuring your database and setting up applications.
This database server and other members of the SAP Database Management Server family such as SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise act as Open Servers. This means you can develop client applications using the SAP Open Client libraries available from SAP. Open Client includes both the Client Library (CT-Library) and the older DB-Library interfaces.
SAP Open Client and Open Server exchange information using an application protocol called the Tabular Data Stream (TDS). All applications built using the SAP Open Client libraries are also TDS applications because the Open Client libraries handle the TDS interface. However, some applications (such as jConnect) are TDS applications even though they do not use the Open Client libraries. They communicate directly using the TDS protocol.
While many Open Servers use the SAP Open Server libraries to handle the interface to TDS, some servers have a direct interface to TDS of their own. SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, SAP IQ, and SAP SQL Anywhere are examples of Open Servers that have native built-in support for TDS.
Two client application protocols are supported by the database servers.
SAP Open Client applications and other SAP applications such as Enterprise Connect Data Access (ECDA) use TDS.
The .NET, ODBC, JDBC, Embedded SQL, OLE DB, and other application interfaces use a separate application protocol called Command Sequence (CmdSeq).
Application protocols such as TDS and CmdSeq sit on top of lower-level communications protocols that handle network traffic. TDS and CmdSeq use the TCP/IP network protocol to communicate between computers. In addition, SQL Anywhere also supports a shared memory protocol designed for same-computer communication.