User Settings for Sybase ASE

On a Unix or Linux machine, each user will need some shell variables set up and their path variable extended to access Sybase easily. These values are set up in the user's shell start script. For Korn shell this is '.profile' and for Bash it is '.bashrc'.

The most important variable is $SYBASE which is typically set to /opt/sybase. Use this variable to define all further variables. This ensures that, if you choose to install a parallel version of Sybase, only one variable needs to be changed to point to the new installation.

The following lines should be added to the profile...




Additions to $PATH...

ASE-12_5/install is the installation path. An ordinary user probably doesn't need this but the 'sybase' user and system administrators will.

OCS-12_5/bin is where the basic sybase support facilities live. This gives the user access to isql (the text interface tool) bcp (the bulk loader tool) and sybhelp (the text mode help system)

sybcent41/bin provides access to the Sybase Central graphical database management tool.



Sybase specific Path Identifiers...

LD_LIBRARY_PATH is where the Open Client files may be found.
SYBASE_OCS is the root for external programmes to search from when looking for OCS subroutines.

Note that SYBASE_OCS is always assumed to be subservient to $SYBASE so ONLY the path below $SYBASE should be specified.