When I dump a Sybase database, it doesn't seem to matter whether there's data in the tables or not, the file size is the same. I've been told that this is down to the fact that my dump file is binary and not logical, so the file of the dump file is based on the allocated size of the database. I know that Oracle can use logical dump files, but can I get Sybase to do the something similar, or is there any other sneaky ways of getting the dump file size down?
Since somewhere around version 12 you have been able to perform compressed dumps in ASE.
The syntax is: dump database database_name to file_name [ with compression=compress_level]
compress_level is 0-9. 0 is no compression and 9 is the most. The more you compress the higher the CPU usage whilst running the dump. You just need to peform a little testing to find an appropriate balance of size versus performance.
No special commands are needed to load the dump.