Frequently Asked Question about Whistle:

 

Q. How do you get servers into Whistle? When I go to login, nothing shows up in my server list. I could not find anything in the documentation that tells where this list is built from.

 

A. When you install Open Client 10.0.3 or above on your Windows 95 or Windows NT computer using the installation program provided by Sybase two relevant things are done:

 

1. Files called SQL.INI and LIBCTL.CFG are built in the directory INI under your Sybase directory. (These can be modified using the SQLEDIT utility. Their function is similar to the "interfaces" file under UNIX).

 

2. An environment variable called SYBASE is placed in the global environment with a value that points to the parent of the INI directory. This is also similar to UNIX.

 

So, for example, if you installed Open client in C:\SQL10, there would be a file called C:\SQL10\INI\SQL.INI and one called C:\SQL10\INI\LIBCTL.CFG. There would also be an environment variable called SYBASE with the value C:\SQL10.

 

Under Windows NT the SYSTEM control panel has an "Environment" option where the variables can be set.

 

Under Windows 95 the environment variables are set in the autoexec.bat file with a statement like:

 

SYBASE=C:\SQL10

 

I've noticed that some of the versions of the Open Client installation program just don't work correctly. Usually the NT versions have worked for us; but, the Windows 95 ones seem really messed up. We had one version for Windows 95 that actually copied the DLL's into the Windows\System directory just like the old Windows 3.1 software used to do. I think that's a step backwards. For Windows 95 I'd recommend adding a call statement to the autoexec.bat file. The nstaller is supposed to generate a sybset.bat file to set the environment variables and modify the path. Usually this is found in the C:\SQL10\BIN subdirectory. So the call statement in autoexec.bat would be:

 

call c:\sql10\bin\sybset.bat

 

or, something similar. This will set the WIN95 environment variables similarly to Windows NT.

 

Resetting environment variables requires a reboot for Windows 95; and sometimes for Windows NT, depending on how it was done.

 

Whistle looks for the SYBASE environment variable, then looks for INI\SQL.INI under where it's pointing. It reads the server information from this SQL.INI file and loads the list.

 

6/25/97