Finding SQL Anywhere® Servers over TCP/IP

Connecting to a remote SQL Anywhere database server over TCP/IP can be very straightforward—simply using “UID=userid;PWD=password;ENG=engine_name;LINKS=tcpip” as your connection string is often sufficient. However, there are a number of TCP connection parameters that change the TCP behavior, and the presence of subnets, WANs, and firewalls can also complicate the connection process. This paper describes the algorithm that SQL Anywhere clients use to find a server over TCP/IP and connect to it, and it also describes each of the parameters that can be used to modify the algorithm.