ASA SQL User's Guide
  Monitoring and Improving Performance
    Top performance tips

Try using Adaptive Server Anywhere's compression features

Enabling compression for one connection or for all connections, and adjusting the minimum size limit at which packets are compressed can offer significant improvements to Adaptive Server Anywhere performance under some circumstances.

To determine if enabling compression will help in your particular situation, we recommend that you conduct a performance analysis on your particular network and using your particular application before using communication compression in a production environment.

Enabling compression increases the quantity of information stored in data packets, thereby reducing the number of packets required to transmit a particular set of data. By reducing the number of packets, the data can be transmitted more quickly.

Specifying the compression threshold allows you to choose the minimum size of data packets that you want compressed. The optimal value for the compression threshold may be affected by a variety of factors, including the type and speed of network you are using.

For information about using compression to improve performance, see Adjusting communication compression settings to improve performance.

For more information about compression settings, see the Compress connection parameter [COMP] and the CompressionThreshold connection parameter [COMPTH].