Sybase (SAP) ASE Server image

Dockerfile for creating a Docker container running an ASE server.

Installer needs to be obtained from SAP here (it takes minutes to register, and SAP doesn't look too much at the details you provide):

• https://www.sap.com/cmp/td/sap-ase-enterprise-edition-trial.html

If you want to get started immediately, you can try to pull the image I share on Docker Hub (see Getting Started).

Requirements

You will need a recent x64 Linux Docker host with

• at least 1GB of free disk space
• 2GB of available RAM for the ASE server (you can change this in the ressource file)

Getting Started

I share the image on Docker Hub : https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/blieusong/ase-server.

You can get started by simply firing up docker-compose from the root folder of this project:

docker-compose up -d

docker-compose binds a local volume (sybase-data) to the container, so make sure /var/lib/docker has enough space to host your databases.

You can then access the ASE server on port 5000 of the Docker host.

Creating Your Own Database

The image (blieusong/ase-server) I share is configured with 2k pagesize and iso_1 charset. It requires 2Gb of memory. You can use different settings:

1. Update ressources/ase.rs according to your needs,

2. Build the Docker image.

   $ docker build --build-arg ASE_INSTALL_TGZ="http://whatever.com/ASE_Suite.linuxamd64.tgz" -t blieusong/ase-server .

   The ASE_INSTALL_TGZ variable can also be set in the Dockerfile itself prior to running the docker build command.

Checking That It Works

Once the container (and hence the database server) is up, try to open a database session. For example, using FreeTDS's fisql:

1. Update your freetds.conf (in /etc/freetds or /usr/local/etc) and add the following entry:

   [DB_TEST]
       host = localhost
       port = 5000
       tds version = 5.0
   

2. Then use fisql to start a session:

   $ fisql -Usa -Psybase -SDB_TEST
   Changed database context to 'master'.
   
   1>> select @@version
   2>> go
   
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Adaptive Server Enterprise/16.0 SP03 PL02/EBF 27415 SMP/P/x86_64/SLES 11.1/ase160sp03pl02x/3096/64-bit/FBO/Fri Oct  6 04:51:57  2017
   
   (1 rows affected)
   1>>

   You can alternatively use the provided freetds.conf.

   fisql -I${THIS_PROJECT_FOLDER}/config/freetds.conf -Usa -Psybase -SDB_TEST
   

Technical Details

Feel free to change these in ase.rs in the ressources folder.

Installation

• Container hostname (on the sybase-bridge network): ase-server
• ASE installation folder: /opt/sap
• devices folder: /data on the container, mapped to $HOME/sybase/data on the host

Created Database

• Dataserver name: DB_TEST
• user: sa
• password: sybase
• pagesize: 2048

Ressource Allocation

• Memory: 2GB
• CPUs: 2

Charset

I left iso_1 which comes by default, because I use that at work. But you may want to switch it to something more modern like UTF-8.

Interface or freetds.conf file

If you have a Sybase client, add the following entry to the interface file to connect to the database from the Linux host

DB_TEST
    master tcp ether localhost 5000
    query tcp ether localhost 5000

If you use FreeTDS, the interface file will do too, but you can also add that entry to freetds.conf

[DB_TEST]
    host = localhost
    port = 5000
    tds version = 5.0

References

Adapted from:

• https://github.com/Naaooj/sap-as-docker
• https://github.com/dstore-dbap/sap-ase-docker
• https://github.com/nguoianphu/docker-sybase

The SAP ASE installation guide can also come in handy if you want to reuse this image and tweak the settings:

• https://help.sap.com/viewer/23c3bb4a29be443ea887fa10871a30f8/16.0.4.0/en-US