ASA Programming Guide
Three-Tier Computing and Distributed Transactions
You can use Adaptive Server Anywhere as a database server or resource manager, participating in distributed transactions coordinated by a transaction server.
A three-tier environment, where an application server sits between client applications and a set of resource managers, is a common distributed-transaction environment. Sybase EAServer and some other application servers are also transaction servers.
Sybase EAServer and Microsoft Transaction Server both use the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) to coordinate transactions. Adaptive Server Anywhere provides support for distributed transactions controlled by the DTC service, so you can use Adaptive Server Anywhere with either of these application servers, or any other product based on the DTC model.
When integrating Adaptive Server Anywhere into a three-tier environment, most of the work needs to be done from the Application Server. This chapter provides an introduction to the concepts and architecture of three-tier computing, and an overview of relevant Adaptive Server Anywhere features. It does not describe how to configure your Application Server to work with Adaptive Server Anywhere. For more information, see your Application Server documentation.