> But then, the number of times ASE was restarted since it was INSTALLED?
Usually, yes.
>Does this count get reset when a Patch Ugrade is done?
It does not get reset by upgrade.
> What is the max. Count it may reach.
> Something like, ASE wouldn't start after that. ( Licensed to this much count)
The boot count is stored as an unsigned 32-bit int, so the max would be 4,294,967,295.
Enough to let you reboot ASE once per second for 139 years. :-)
I don't think there is any connection to licensing.
I expect the counter would just overflow to 0 and ASE would keep going.
>Is this stored in any system table?
Yes and no. It is stored in sysanchors for the syssystemdb. sysanchors isn't
a normal table that you can query, though. You can see the value as "dbi_instcount"
in the output of dbcc dbinfo, it is also available as @@bootcount.
Example:
1> set switch on 3604
2> go
Switch 3604 ('print_output_to_client') is turned on.
All supplied switches are successfully turned on.
1> dbcc dbinfo(sybsystemdb)
2> go | grep instcount
offset 208=dbi_instcount: 9
> After all what is need of this Boot Count.
In looking into this, I found that it is used internally by the Adaptive Server Transaction Coordination (ASTC) feature, to determine if servers involved in a distributed transaction have rebooted since the transaction began.
It also just satisfies general curiosity over how many times the server has been rebooted. :-)
-bret