Yesterday, I did my first Sybase IQ upgrade. I upgraded our main datawarehouse from Sybase IQ 16 to 16 SP10. The process was easy: Stop the database instance, install the new software, start the instance (from new software home), run an SQL to upgrade the metadata. Although the process was easy, I had some unexpected problems so I wanted to my notes in case you may need to upgrade your Sybase IQ.
You have probably heard it a thousand times but here I’ll say it again: Read the manual! Then open a ticket (or call) to Sybase support and ask questions about upgrading process. The process is very easy but it’s not documented well. Maybe I feel like this because I’m used to read Oracle’s word-class manuals. I’m serious. Oracle provides best manuals compared to the other Database vendors.
Second mandatory warning: Before you start to upgrade operation, make sure you have a valid backup of database.
Make sure that your license file is compatible with the software version you’ll install. You may need to generate an uptodate SySAM License! You can also contact Sybase suport and ask them to send you a compatible license file.
Sybase support send me a file named IQSERV160010P_2-20011180.zip. I have unzipped it and see that setup.bin (the installer) is not marked as executable. I made it executable and run it. That doesn’t sound like a big deal but later I figured out that while installing, the setup utility tries to execute other setup.bin files (located in subfolders), and none of them are marked as executable 
You may use such a one-line to mark them executable:
for f in `find . -name setup.bin`; do chmod +x $f; done
After updating software, check the version by running “start_iq -v2”. It will not start the instance, it will just show the software version. If you see the correct version (a higher version number than your previous one), start your instance, connect it using your favorite Sybase client, and run the following command:
ALTER DATABASE UPGRADE PROCEDURE ON
It will take only for a few seconds to modify metadata and your database is ready to go!
After upgrading software, somehow “Interactive SQL (dbisql)” tool started to not to work:
Interactive SQL could not load the "SQLAnywhere" plug-in. Its "ngdbc.jar" file has moved or has been deleted. You will not be able to connect to the databases handled by that plug-in. Interactive SQL could not load the "SybaseIQ" plug-in. Its "ngdbc.jar" file has moved or has been deleted. You will not be able to connect to the databases handled by that plug-in. Interactive SQL could not load the "HANA" plug-in. Its "ngdbc.jar" file has moved or has been deleted. You will not be able to connect to the databases handled by that plug-in. Interactive SQL could not load the "GenericODBC" plug-in. Its "ngdbc.jar" file has moved or has been deleted. You will not be able to connect to the databases handled by that plug-in. Interactive SQL cannot start because it is not installed correctly. No database plug-ins has been registered. To fix this problem, you should reinstall the program.
To fix this problem, I re-registered IQ plugins to dbisql:
cd $SYBASE/IQ-16_0/java dbisql -Xregister sa16 SybaseIQ com.sybase.saisqlplugin.IQISQLPlugin "$(pwd)/saip16.jar:$(pwd)/jodbc4.jar"