Sybase, Inc. announced that Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 12.5.1, the latest release of the company's enterprise-class relational database management system (RDBMS), is now available to Mac OS X Panther customers. With ASE 12.5.1, Apple users will be able to deploy database-driven applications that take advantage of one of the most cost-effective data management systems for business-critical computing. ASE for Panther combines the best of both worlds -- Sybase's high performance, scalable database and Apple's legendary ease of use," said Dr. Raj Nathan, senior vice president and general manager, Sybase Infrastructure Platform Group. "This release demonstrates our continued commitment to provide the Mac community with data management solutions that offer the best performance with the best use of resources -- both systems and people." "We performed a full range of real world tests on production databases used by our applications, comparing Sybase ASE running on Apple G5 against various configurations from other vendors," said David Knight, CEO of OneStep Solutions Plc, a leader in debt recovery solutions for local government, legal and commercial organizations. "ASE 12.5.1 under Mac OS X 10.3 beat the others on price/performance by a factor of three. In addition, this performance pairing has opened a number of new opportunities for us -- from lowering the entry price of our solutions to cost effective backup and reporting servers -- and the orders are already rolling in. Combining increased sales with the lower development and support costs that Sybase ASE on Apple's Mac OS X offers is going to improve our bottom line significantly." New capabilities in Sybase ASE 12.5.1 allow users to affordably close today's "Operational Gap" -- the gap created between the need to scale up to handle exponential growth in data volume/complexity, and the need to control or reduce the cost of data management, including people, systems and applications. Greater System Performance and Scalability ASE 12.5.1 supports large data sets and increased data volumes more efficiently on all platforms, including Panther. Operational scalability -- the ability to serve increased workloads and data sets with existing hardware, software and DBA resources -- has been improved with enhancements to system performance achieved by the following new features: scalable logging, parallel recovery, index sampling, temporary databases per application or login and improved database reorganization. In addition, ASE 12.5.1 takes full advantage of Panther's support for asynchronous disk I/O and increased addressable memory (up to approximately 4GB), thus providing users with a substantial performance boost over Jaguar. Self-management Features and New DBA Tools Reduce Operational Costs Database operational costs consume a large percentage of IT budgets, and have soared to meet the demands of online and mobile data access and real-time applications. Sybase ASE 12.5.1 includes new features to reduce operational costs, such as self-management, automatic resource management and transportable databases. These capabilities enable companies to handle new and increased demands for data access without significantly increasing DBA costs. In addition, Open Directory User Authentication, ASE Plug-in for Server Admin, new System Preference Pane for ASE, and enhanced Rendezvous support improve security and DBA productivity. "Our customers who use Mac OS X demand high performance, but frequently don't have DBA resources to manage a complex system," said Lowell Schneider, president of Schema Research, a California-based technology-consulting firm. "Sybase ASE 12.5.1 allows us to offer a reliable, high-performance enterprise-class RDBMS without the burdensome staff and maintenance costs." Faster, Simpler Application Development Cost containment business strategies mandate use of open standards-based technologies when developing applications. ASE 12.5.1 delivers faster and lower-cost application development with support for all the leading development languages and environments including WebObjects, JBoss, Tomcat, Servoy, 4D, RealBasic, Omnis, as well as the new Open Client Framework. "Sybase was one of the first vendors to bring enterprise level solutions to Mac OS X taking advantage of the world's most advanced operating system," said Ron Okamoto, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. "Sybase continues its strong Mac OS X support with the release of ASE 12.5.1 delivering easy-to use and cost effective data management solutions for business-critical computing."